Chasing Dominic
by Carumati
Summary: He didn't wake up.  Ariadne is charged with the task of bringing him back from Limbo.  There, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself.  Eventual Dom/Ariadne.
1. 0 to 4

Author's Note: _Inception _gave me flying dreams flying dreams! I haven't had flying dreams in two years! So I watched the movie again and I'm still blown away. I'm anticipating the movie script and the soundtrack (cue inner jig). In my head, Saito isn't _The Tourist_, but _The Person Who Bought an Entire Airline for Kicks._ Anyways, about this fic's outline- I won't lie: it's scribbled and crammed into the margins of margins on the back of my old Statistics test about binomial distributions, there's still the nice, happy, smelly sticker- blueberry, if my nose is correct.

**Beta: swampophelia**

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Prologue. 0_

The hanging lights in the city left small circles of yellow lights onto the cars that moved underneath. A traffic light switched from green to yellow to red. Pedestrians walked to and fro, strangers to one another.

Ariadne stood on the curb; breathing in the chilled air that reeked of smog and car exhaust and racking her brains, trying to remember… _It used to rain. _Remember what? She looks at her shoes- Converses. There should be a partner with her. Usually, two people go under to prevent the other from losing themselves. _Going under what?_ A taxi cab swerved past and over a puddle, she sidestepped to avoid the oncoming splash. _Losing themselves? _But Yusuf said at the airport that he only has enough dosage for one individual. _Who's Yusuf? What airport? _And so the team had chosen her to… to… She nervously tucked in a stray hair.

_How did I end up here? _

She knelt down to the curb and hunted through her pockets, breathing a sigh of relief as she fished out a golden bishop. _But its weight wasn't familiar. _She set the bishop to the ground, aware of the strange looks she was getting from bystanders, and poked the piece. The bishop fell _the wrong way. _She picked it up-_- this is a totem._

This is a dream.

She winced as the memories began to flood her.

"With the sedative, it should be relatively simple for you to reach Cobb." Arthur had paused, his eyes narrowed in worry, "Suicide is much harder than murder. Are you certain about this, Ariadne?"

"Don't mother hen her," Eames had drawled behind the man. Arthur scowled; the British man winked, "You can't put a person on Yusuf's drug and a person in regular sleep in the same dream. Uncle Eames would be watching you, Ariadne." He sobered up, "I hope you remember all the information in our impromptu lessons about that place, it's still quite mysterious." He brightened up, "Though Saito here is proudly one of the four in history to come out of it relatively sane." The Japanese business tycoon twitched. "Nice chap, that one." Eames murmured.

"I think I'll be ok." Ariadne had assured the group as much as herself, she heard a waver in her speech. She squeezed Cobb's limp hand.

"Don't lose yourself." Arthur had reminded her for the fifth time as he inserted the needle, "When you come back out, remember that we'll all be here for you." The PASIV hummed on in the half-lit lounge and she closed her eyes.

This is a dream.

She took a moment to admire the internationalist architecture of the area, grey and tall; it had been the first layer dream, though before, it had been raining. She scanned the roads for the tell-tale signs of train tracks and wasn't disappointed. _I have to get to Limbo._ But there was only one way to get there, it was fairly obvious. _I could jump off a building… But Yusuf requested for this place to not have access to the upper levels of the high rises to discourage snipers. _After slipping into a side street with noticeably less pedestrians, she patted herself down and found something cold and hard pressing between her jacket and her shirt. The gun was already loaded and cocked, heavy death in her hands. Sitting down on the curb, she turned it over, this way and that, biting her lip in worry.

"I would suggest a quickie to the head." Yusuf had piped up helpfully behind Cobb's comatose body. "They said that you wouldn't even feel pain if you aim for the spinal column."

She slowly raised the gun to her head, right above the ear. Her hand was trembling; _I can't do this._ She lowered it down and sighed, this isn't suicide- she's only doing this to save someone, it'll be a onetime deal with a gun. She'd rather jump off every ledge in her dreams than use a gun, she rather be stabbed. M_om and dad were killed by guns_. There was no one else on the street, as if the projections knew to give her space. Were the projections hers? She looked into the barrel and slowly inserted it into her mouth, tasting cold metal and dirt. _Won't miss… _Her hands were shaking again and she distantly realized that she was crying.

She pulled the trigger.

.

Chasing Dominic

_One. 1_

The hospital room was white, walls, door, floor, ceiling, furniture, bed, save for the curtains, which had a psychedelic seventies flower wallpaper pattern. There weren't any needles in her arms, she should be thankful though she wasn't sure why. _How did I get here?_ She was still in her clothes; the nurses hadn't dressed her in the hospital gowns with the humiliating open flap in the back. Her eyes were stinging and irritated and her tongue was too thick, she felt sick, like she had swallowed too much seawater and sand.

Her hand involuntarily slipped into her front pocket: a golden bishop with a _balanced_ weight. She rubbed her eyes.

Arthur had nominated her to save Cobb, logically noting that, "You know the most about him. He always kept his secrets close to himself but you managed to worm your way into his heart. You're our best choice."

_Worm my way into his heart? More like I intruded into his privacy. _"…What happens if I fail to bring him back?" Ariadne had asked in a hushed whisper.

The entire VIP lounge, which Saito had bought for half an hour with an untold amount of money, was silent. Yusuf had hesitantly offered, "Under my lab in Mombasa is a chamber for those who believe or want to believe that their dreams are reality."

"That's it?"

"Family members pay for a caretaker or take them to a hospital with the PASIV. Those in Limbo stay indefinitely, living several lifetimes till in the real world, their body gives up. They die in their dreams. Only a handful can claw their way back, but as Eames said, they're usually… different." The chemist had flashed a painful smile.

_How many years have passed in Limbo since Cobb arrived?_ _What has changed? _Ariadne pulled the white sheets over her soaked body and shivered. The cold reached to the marrow of her bones, that couldn't be healthy. _Who took me in? _She felt dizzy enough to puke up a hoard of crabs and sea shells. She imagined an octopus squishing itself among her innards.

The door opened. A nurse with black curls and in the standard white uniform with a clipboard entered and gave her a critical glance, "Oh good, you're awake."

"What happened?" Ariadne managed to croak out.

"You're suffering from dehydration though strangely enough, water in your lungs. It's a mystery; you have the doctors scratching their heads. Still, we took care of that, and you had a head wound which we already bandaged. Some scratches and bruises, nothing major. We didn't have time to change you into dry clothes, but they are there in the dresser by your side. You were found washed up on the beach – care to explain why?"

Ariadne looked to her left and surely enough; there was a set of dry clothes, a towel, and a glass of water. _Where they there before? I don't think so, the desk was clear. _When the nurse didn't get an answer, she tsked, pursed her red lips, and made a note _scritch scratch_. "Will you tell us your name?"

She shifted nervously under her sheets, "I'm, uh," she sneezed, struggling to bring the prerogative of her mission to the forefront of her mind under the hawk-eyed gaze of the nurse, "is… err, Dominic Cobb?"

"…A family member?" The woman arched a perfect eyebrow with no hint of sass but all around condescension. Ariadne squirmed again and laughed nervously. "Well," the nurse sighed through her nostrils and kneaded the skin between her eyes, "It's a start. I'll look through the directories. The doctor said that you should stay here, for another couple of days for a full recovery. Ring if you need anything." The projection left, heels clicking imposingly on the tile floor.

The door closed. _That wasn't standard hospital procedure. That wasn't standard projection behavior. _Ariadne pushed herself up and groaned as sore muscles made itself known; apparently she suffered a beating on the waves and rocks. _I don't think the projection was mine, but she didn't look suspicious at all. _Gritting her teeth, she swung a leg over the bed, took the glass of water and chugged the whole thing- an oasis in the Sahara. The gun was gone. She gingerly began to peel off her damp clothes, layer by layer, dried herself, and then shrugged on the undershirt, the loose green t-shirt and jeans. She pulled the curtains back and stared outside, blocks of buildings, perfect rectangles, loomed in the horizon like a never-ending army. What did she expect- a blimp slowly appearing from the right, flashing the sign 'Welcome Back to Limbo?'

"Cobb is stuck there; it means that he's already accepted that world as reality. That means that his totem is either lost to him, meaning that someone else had taken it, or he completely forgot about it – which is possible since one can't think properly in dreams the longer one stays down." Arthur had mentioned, "There is a grounding theory on how to pull out victims from Limbo – flimsy at best and never truly proven but it was the most reasonable from the pile. It's called Introspection. Introspection says that Cobb needs to understand himself wholly and completely, accept his mistakes and faults, and have the desire to return to reality." It was a well-known fact that the infamous extractor had issues that rivaled the neurosis of the majority in the world, including those of asylum patients, but Ariadne was sure that he _had_ acknowledged them all. Maybe he was suffering from residual effects… or something. She regretted not taking the offered summer Psychology 101 seminar in Paris.

"Convert him to Buddhism," Eames had drawled, "That might help a tad." Arthur had elbowed him.

She fiddled with her bishop and stared out the window, the sunlight was an off white, taupe shade when it entered her small room through those distasteful curtains. _They say that taupe is soothing. _She took a deep breath and rolled her chess piece from finger to finger, she swung her legs back and forth, knocking her heels on the frame.

The projections didn't recognize her as a foreign body. Assuming that Cobb's projections are no longer connected to him, since that is the closest assumption to anything that doesn't add up in the dream realm, the key to get out of Limbo was to have all of one's projections reintegrated into one's consciousness, at least temporarily. Mal had Inception performed on her but the result wasn't exactly what one would call satisfactory. _Mal is one thing I wouldn't need to worry about. _Cobb needed to retrieve his totem and want to go back to the real world. It'll be hard- but at least his projections are so detached from him that they wouldn't be able to share Cobb's mind so they wouldn't know that she, a foreign presence, is there among them. The projections wouldn't know her till Cobb finds his totem.

_And when the totem is found, oh boy, we'll have to move quickly._ She glanced around and then did a double-take, the curtains were green, the exact shade of her shirt, probably the same material too. Somehow, this didn't surprise her. Time stretched infinitely in Limbo, she waited without moving and gauged the shadows in her room, which had a tendency to speed up and slow at inopportune moments. _What if, after everything, Cobb doesn't want to go home? What if he prefers his dreams?_ Ariadne nervously fidgeted but forced herself to still, she wanted to do something, like draw and sketch, to create. _What if-_

The door opened again. Alarmed, Ariadne glanced back at the window- sundown, _that was fast_, and back at the new occupant. The man had his hair slicked back, he probably shaved some days back, and he wore a pristine white shirt and trousers. He hasn't aged at all, his very form hinting of power behind his appearance. Ariadne swallowed and cleared her throat: _What do I say? What do I say? What do I say? What do I- _"Hey, Cobb," she greeted like an old friend.

Walking in and closing the door behind him, still standing, Dom Cobb stared at her, assessing her from her bandaged head down to her bare feet, "Have we met before?" He asked slowly. Though his face was stoic, his eyes glinted with unreadable emotion that immediately placed her on edge. She struggled to identify the emotion in his eyes and failed.

"Do I look familiar to you?" She asked cautiously, hiding behind her hair and bandages. The atmosphere had immediately morphed into the Twilight Zone meets surrealist air, reminiscent of Salvador Dali or Max Ernst. She wasn't walking on eggshells; she was walking on clouds and trusting them to hold her above the ground.

This world slowed down to a snail's pace, both of them suddenly very careful to choose the right words. _One false step and you might set off the pipe bomb._ "It's been so long ago, if I can recall you from a half-forgotten dream." With his voice half present and half absent, Cobb slowly walked over and sat on her bed at the corner farthest away. Though her eyes moved to follow him, her head didn't. The bed shifted to accommodate his weight; he was beyond her blind spot. It didn't matter- she was too scared to look at him. _Why is he sitting down? What is he thinking? _A full minute passed before the silence was alleviated. "She was vibrant and smart with so much untapped potential. That person saved me. But I don't remember anything else."

"I understand," She sympathized, words emerging out of her naturally, "As more time passed it's easier to forget, especially the memories you want to be done with."

"She said, 'Don't lose yourself.'" Ariadne stared back to the window ledge and imagined it dripping paint, its purity dissolving away and revealing greys and blacks. "It's been years since I had that dream." The window ledge began to condense, the white moisture slowly getting thicker. Her heart broke at his non-answer. _He lost himself. What am I doing? What can I do? He lost himself. He's in Limbo and he lost himself. _"It was sometime after Mal died but it's been too long…" He trailed off. Ariadne watched the sun sink into the army of skyscrapers feeling pensive and nervous. She was too scared to look back, too scared to see this man, much the same yet so different. She could hear him breathe, she could hear herself breathe.

Cobb didn't move; he seemed to be waiting for a response. _Maybe… perhaps…_

"My name's Ariadne."

The bed creaked. It was too silent, dead air, dead light, dead room, nothing moved. She rolled the bishop and traced the edges, the weight wasn't right. The bed creaked again, shifting its weight, to all four sides. She heard Cobb stand, his joints cracking; she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck, prickly and hard. Then Cobb walked away with slow, controlled footsteps. The door opened and closed.

She let out a breath that she didn't realize that she was holding.

_That went well._

She swallowed and touched her head; the bandaged part was painful only if she applied pressure. She watched the sun disappear and the night turn blue and purple. _That was the weirdest conversation she has ever had._ Night was upon Limbo.

_Two. 2_

The bath had done wonders to her sore limbs. But that was hours past. She spent the entire night awake, fatigue never setting in her body since one doesn't normally sleep in a dream and she'd rather not take the chance in a place of pure subconscious. She picked at the fraying edges of her bed sheets and then she counted the tiles on the ceiling. She then made a small cave from her blankets and pillows, making small indentations for imaginary secret passages and walkways, exactly how she would've done if she was seven. Then she destroyed the structure and flung herself back to her bed, yelping as pain shot through her entire body, throbbing but manageable.

_This is a dream._

There was no way to keep track of time. In the middle of the night, in the bottom drawer, she found a pen and an empty notebook, and she began to draw.

_Three. 3_

The door opened and closed – a nurse brought in breakfast. Then a woman in a white lab coat came and asked her how she was feeling and if she had headaches, dizziness, or nausea. The seeming doctor peeled back the bandage on her head and examined her before nodding contently.

The door opened and closed – a nurse brought in lunch.

The door opened and closed. Ariadne did not look up as she waved the nurse to the dresser, still hatching and cross-hatching over the blank sides of the steps; maybe she should add a Victorian trim to get rid of the monotony and maybe as a distraction.

"That's a very interesting sketch you have there." She jolted at the sudden baritone voice on her right.

"Multiple Penrose staircases?" With a hand spread over her heart, mentally stomping her rapid heartbeats to submission, she peered over her shoulder and saw a pair of amused eyes. "I don't think I properly introduced myself yesterday. My name is Dominic Cobb, but I usually go by Dom." He held out a hand.

She shook it, making sure to firmly grip and shook twice. "Pleasure," she said and meaning it. She honestly didn't expect him to come back and she had prepared to hunt through Limbo for him.

"Are you an Architect?"

She nodded.

"May I?" He made a motion with his arms, she handed over her notebook: half filled with doodles. She admitted that she wanted to gauge his reaction, see if she could trigger another 'forbidden' memory, but he kept speaking with his head down. At least it meant that he was piqued. "I used to work as an Architect too. I was partners with my wife, she was a gifted Extractor, could get anything she wanted."

"Are you still?"

"No. Since my previous line of work, well, it was not strictly legal. Compounded with the fact that I have two kids that I can finally take care of…" He leveled another unreadable look at her, she smiled vaguely back. "I work in the Hospital's Dream Therapy department these days, sometimes assisting the police on my off hours." He threw her a rueful grin, "I'll find a better job as soon as the government can learn to forgive and forget my past actions." He flipped through the notebook with an expert hand, his eyebrows rising into his hairline as he gave a whistle, "You have an innate talent with mazes, 2-D and 3-D."

"Only when I get bored." She replied as she stared at his back; he was wearing a light blue shirt this time. She found that she couldn't imagine him in a casual t-shirt. She couldn't imagine him in a casual anything. Cobb turned toward her and she quickly averted her gaze, pretending to be fascinated with the hospital painting of a vase of flowers.

"Then you must've been bored for a long time." He gazed at her like she was the most interesting specimen in the world. "These are very creative." _Don't look at his eyes too long, Ariadne; you know you can't look at his eyes for too long._ She swallowed. There are many people in this world, most she never met, and most she will never meet. Few gave her the notion to be intimidated, but this man? Dom Cobb? He could be absolutely _intense._

"I only learn from the best." She responded guardedly, watching for every tick on his face in which there were none. _You are responsible for tipping my world upside down, you still are. _She ventured into uncertain, shark-infested waters, "You said, 'it's only when we wake up that we realize how things are actually strange.'" To have a sense of reality as skewed as this, it… it takes a lot of self-convincing.

Cobb's laughter was shaky at best. "I gave you your first lesson didn't I?"

His laughter, bubbling to the surface in hideous greenness, wasn't real. At the forefront were memories; at the back was the Truth that needed to be accepted. She's walking blindly into this, hands out, fingers touching everything rough and smooth, hot and cold. There were trigger words and images that can bring the Extractor back but it takes time – so much time. They both have all the time in the world and then some.

The brain is the biggest enigma in the universe. Time stretches to infinity in the pure subconscious, years past and then… _you wake up and Arthur is there, telling you that you were only under for three seconds and those three seconds was the time it took you to pluck up the courage to blow your own brains out in the first level._

Cobb reached out his hand. His fingers were hot on her skin, her right cheek, mindful of her bandages; she unconsciously leaned into the touch before she realized what she had done. For one second, she felt comforted, and then the hand withdrew. "You want me to remember." He murmured, peering askance at his palm, clenching and unclenching as if it was an alien part of him, "But it's been so long." _Should this be called progress?_ "I… I need to go. Miles and the kids are waiting for me." She wondered if she caused Cobb some sleepless nights, bothered by an issue lurking in the deepest crevices of his mind, unable to unearth them.

HE still held her half-finished notebook. "You can keep that, if you want." Ariadne suggested. She shrugged, "I'll just ask the nurse for another one." Inwardly, she couldn't understand why he would want it.

As she said that, he flipped through it with a nostalgic smile on his face, "Thank you." He snapped the book shut and stood up. His smile was wider and warmer than the one he wore when he first entered. When his hand touched the doorknob, she couldn't help but blurt out.

"Will you come back?"

He turned around, surprised at the question, before his eyes took on a mischievous glint, "You did name me as a family relative, didn't you? The doctor said that he can release you tomorrow. Apparently, you heal very quickly. So, yes, I'll be here to pick you up. Ok?" She nodded.

"Sure. Bye." He threw back another half-hearted grin before exiting.

The door closed. She reached for her totem: the weight was balanced. She exhaled, rolled up her pant leg and began massaging her calf muscles and moving her ankle around in circles. Outside, a train rumbled uncomfortably close to the hospital. Someone knocked on the door, crisp and short raps.

"Come in."

A new nurse, tall, auburn hair, brown eyes, walked in with a tray of food and a brand new notebook. "Here's your dinner." She waved the notebook in the air with an amused smile, "the man downstairs asked that you be supplied with this." She casually tossed it over, Ariadne easily caught it. It looked like it had just come out of its wrappings. "He's a dear. Is he your husband?"

Caught off kilter, Ariadne stuttered, "Huh? Oh, umm no. No. Just… just a family member."

The nurse smiled, placed a finger on her lips, and winked, "Really? Well, he's quite a looker." The woman set down the tray and walked out. "Sleep tight, tomorrow is going to be a big day for you."

Ariadne stared at the back of the projection with disbelief and awe before she fell into a fit of helpless giggles. The strangeness of her adventures finally caught up to her. She fluffed up her pillow and prepared for another sleepless night.

_Four. 4_

She fingered the bandages wrapped tightly around her head, no pain. Things really don't make sense in Limbo and it's a bit disturbing to see how fast she has come to accept the eccentricities with a resigned sigh.

For the past few hours, she's gotten stir-crazy, wanting to see something new beyond these walls and the green curtains. If there ever was a perfect time to go crazy, it would be at the witching hour. Between two rates of time and two worlds, she knew that there had to be a paradigm shift, neon colored and stampeding forward with the force of an earthquake. Except in Limbo, it was too slow to notice. She drew mazes with a near religious fervor; she drew mazes from the Inception; she drew mazes with no end and wondered if she's in one of them. The hospital light was bright and hot enough that she could forgo her blankets. She drew the curtains shut and didn't pay it any mind till the first rays of sunlight hit the top of the window.

By midday, she was laying sprawled on top of her covers, feeling too hot under her stomach, her hair sticking to her skin like iron fillings to a magnet. She shoved her face into her pillow, her feet against the headboard, and tapping out a four-four rhythm. She couldn't draw enough strength to draw up the curtains. She turned to face the door and willed the door to open. Company would be much obliged.

Four minutes later, the door did open. Cobb was dressed in a full suit ensemble, Arthur's long-time influence, surely. He glanced at her, "Are you bored?" his voice lilted with amusement. Behind him were a nurse and a doctor, quickly taking charge.

"A little." She pushed herself up into a sitting position and allowed the white dressed duo to examine her, to peel off the bandages, to take her temperature, to ask her more questions, before finally declaring her fit for release.

The doctor conversed with Cobb for some last words; Cobb nodded and they shook hands. The doctor exited the room.

"What did she say?" Ariadne asked as she gathered her old, salted clothing and slipped into her shoes.

"No strenuous exercise, enough rest, nutrition and liquids." Cobb ticked off, surveying her room as if this was the first time he gotten a good look at it. "No medication needed." He stretched out his arms and popped his shoulders, "Right, let's go." He took her clothes, despite her protests, "I can handle this. Come on, it's nearly lunchtime. I know this quaint, charming café that I'm sure you'll love. They serve the best espresso and lattes." He took her hand, ignored her surprised squeak, and guided her out of the hospital.


	2. 5 to 9

Author's Note: I wrote this while playing Lizst's Hungarian Dance No.2 on repeat. I shall now disappear to Alaska. Ciao!

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

**Beta: swampophelia**

xwx.

_Five. 5_

Limbo's skies were never the exactly sky blue - everything in this realm was touched with a hint of taupe. Like scurrying ants, projections were everywhere doing their own business whether it was walking with a destination in mind or flipping through some papers or eating a light snack. In fact, the only strange element of this sight was the severe absence of any human interaction. They were determined not to even look at another body, each to his or her small world.

Ariadne saw one man, gelled-back, black hair and dressed in a pressed business suit duck into an alleyway. Moments later, she peeked into the mysterious passage as she walked by and was puzzled when she saw trashcans, brick walls, a dead end, but no projection. There was no way anyone could've disappeared unless it was through the large manhole half hidden under an overflowing trash bag, but that, she really doubted. She would've investigated further if it wasn't for Cobb's firm grip on her hand.

Heat crept into her cheeks making her thankful that he didn't look back. _Why hasn't he letting go yet? Does he think I'm going to run away? _The man hasn't really spoken to her yet since they left the hospital, but she couldn't detect any negative emotions from him. This was awkward, even for her, and she wasn't exactly sociable according to the norm. _He probably isn't a true people-person._ _And if he wasn't, then how did he get to be an Extractor then? _She looked around at the projections and their own personal bubbles. _They're probably little bits and pieces of Cobb._ _Bits and pieces… _She grinned at her own lame humor.

His hand was so hot that she could keenly feel its absence as soon as he let her go. His heat was a furnace that could leave an imprint, like a branding mark, on her skin that quickly faded with the incoming wind. Cobb walked past the waist-high gate and into the café, which was situated on a triangular street corner. It was the Paris café that he had taken her for her first PASIV experience. He guided her to the exact same table right under the awning and gestured for a waiter, who quickly took their orders and left them to their devices.

After fiddling with her drink and straw, Ariadne decided to take the initiative, "You said that your previous job, before your therapy work, wasn't strictly legal. You were an," her mind flashed to the moment Cobb looked fascinated at her sketches, "Architect in an extraction team?"

Cobb nodded and tilted his head a little to the side, "I still miss those days." He acknowledged, "It was pure creation and comparing it to a vocation such as a Dream Therapist, there can be no mistake which one triumphs." Ariadne inwardly agreed. One could build entire cathedrals structurally impossible in reality, cities that never existed, with naught but a thought and the proper amount of drive. "But it was a dangerous job and at the time, I was tending to my kids, Phillipa and James, my two little angels. Now, both are in universities on the other side of the country. I would return to my original life, but I'm much too old to go on those daredevil adventures." He laughed and sipped his latte. Ariadne blinked.

"Old?" She parroted.

"You flatter me," Cobb smirking replied, "It's been years since I've done an extraction job, even longer as the Architect." Ariadne was speechless and confused, she opened her mouth and closed it again and looked at the man, trying to see what oldness he was mentioning. _He said that years had passed since his last extraction job, but he hasn't aged a day. _The little caricature of Ariadne in her head flailed comically this way and that, batting away at the question marks above her head.

"Monsieur et Madame, your appetizers," the clinking of plates on the table alerted her to the presence of the waiter. Cobb gave a close-mouth smile in thanks. Ariadne poked at the vibrant salad and wondered if the waiter had first poured salted olive oil or Italian Sauce. If Cobb could remember this much about her, even if it was subconsciously, then she shouldn't worry. She raised her head to thank the waiter, but her eye was drawn to the reflection of the window behind him, more specifically, Cobb's reflection.

In the tinted, double-paned window, the man before her sported noticeable crows-feet at the corner of his eyes and pepper gray hair, all the signs of an elder man, but his eyes were bold. Cobb cleared his throat; she hastily turned back to her host, feeling guilty for getting so easily distracted. This was just like her seminar classes. The waiter departed in his black and white impeccable glory.

"I think you age like fine wine," she reassured him, before eating a mouthful of lettuce, and then she realized what she had said. "I mean," she hotly blushed and concentrated on her course, "It's… well…"

"Yes?" His voice gently coaxed. He was clearly entertained.

"Developing a charisma that can," She moved the last portions of her greens over the Italian sauce in a circle, "you know, charm? That's how you became an Extractor."

…Wait. He made it clear that he was an Architect. She wasn't supposed to know of his temporary position as an Extractor. Whoops. _Ariadne, what did you just say?_

The frown on his face made her cringes even further, cementing how she mentally inserted her foot into mouth. "I became an Extractor because the original Extractor of my team, Mal, my wife, had passed away." His expression was stony and closed off. _One step forward and a hundred steps back. _Cobb looked down at his plate as he ate with a furrowed brow. A great, impenetrable, invisible wall formed between them and she had no choice but to wait.

_Six. 6_

Enough time had passed in the café for her to nearly finish her lunch and for Cobb to take pity on her mortification. He had taken both of her notebooks and was thumbing through her most recent sketches. "A Penrose triangle?" Ariadne refused to look up as he spoke; she heard a rustling of pages and the telltale sounds of an exhale. "Ariadne?"

She reluctantly met his gaze. He silently encouraged her with an envious pair of puppy dog eyes that said, 'Please respond' – that small hint of emotion could only be seen through his eyes, shrouded everywhere else. He didn't want this… this… _what would you call this rendezvous…_ to fall flat, for whatever reason that she doesn't know. She lowered her eyes to where his hands were resting on her rough sketch.

His voice was softer more delicate than she can recollect. "I've thought about it from time to time. From a triangle to a Penrose Octagon as an Architect - didn't really see too much point to it." Cobb propped his elbows on the table. She dimly noticed that his plate was clean.

It took her two seconds to react. "Not if you're hiding, but what if you wanted to trap someone?" Ariadne reached over and scrawled out some windows and doors so the shape looked like a modern structure. "I think… it might be a way for projections to disappear into the dream. Once they walk out of the Sleeper's sight, they walk off the possible plane and cease to exist like so," she drew a small stick figure and an arrow pointing in the direction of the impossible dream plane.

At that instant, they wordlessly reached an accord. All was right in Limbo. Cobb beamed at her; she couldn't help but return the favor.

The next few minutes flew by in quick session. They bent over the same notebook, foreheads inches away from touching discussing theories and scenarios, laughing at each other's wild imaginations as they competed to see who would make the most bizarre story. But most of the time, they discussed theories and 'what-ifs'.

Cobb's brow furrowed, "I'm thinking that this structure would be a good way to confuse hostile projections, if the Mark is trained in protecting his subconscious." He traced the drawing, "the triangle's original intent was to distort the definition between 2-D and 3-D. It would be useful." The Café began to play Edith Piaf's _La Vie En Rose_, Ariadne's heart skipped a beat before she realized that it wasn't a false kick, "But we wouldn't know for sure." Cobb tapped his chin, "the science in the field was never explored thoroughly or officially by the government because many corporations saw the immediate benefits of high-yields espionage."

Ariadne leaned back and tried to visualize the political maneuverings, the heavy lobbying, the greed and the people, the Extraction teams that take advantage of the climate. For Sleepers it was a high-yield, high-stakes game with the danger of losing oneself forever, but the siren call was too hard to resist once it was heard. So what about the future? If virtual reality was to finally come into fruition, where customers can create worlds of their own where everything went their way, would they be willing to spend time in reality? On the streets were projections with their little belongings and personal bubbles. She watched from a distance as a young brunette ducked behind a street lamp and didn't come out the other side. _She looks familiar. _"Kind of like NASA and Virgin Galactic?" She asked.

He made a half-nod and laid his hands on the table, "Sort of. Again, what the corporations did was not strictly legal." He made an 'oh well' motion with his shoulders, "Money traded hands under the table and the government backed off and out of anything that had to do with the subconscious. It's all private entrepreneurship that's funding the tests and dream therapy sessions in hospitals. So the knowledge of how to operate in a dream are usually kept close to a small number of people except for what you can call the basics."

"Like Arthur's Penrose Stairs." She sipped her drink and tapped the ice together.

For a few seconds, all she could hear was the dull chatting of the other projections and Edith Piaf's dulcet tones. _Moi pour lui dans la vie, Il me l'a dit, l'a jure pour la vie… _Alarmed, Ariadne raised her head and saw the most peculiar expression on the man's face. Deep within him, between the head and the heart, was an inner conflict that he was struggling to keep suppressed. She waited patiently for him to recover and turned to the double-pane windows; his reflection looked much older. She wondered if this was how he was truly going to look in some years in reality. Finally, Cobb said with minor strain, "M.C. Escher's drawings did spark an inspiration among professional Sleepers and facts about the paradox of Penrose Stairs were published in two books. Sadly, the Dreamer has to visualize and believe in a paradox before it can become a part of a dream. Few people have that gift." Cobb rubbed his eyes; he looked emotionally and mentally wiped out. She wondered if she could push him a bit farther.

"You don't know who Arthur is, do you?" She sadly asked, her hand resting over his in a soothing manner.

He leveled a glare at her that only lasted for five seconds before he relaxed and despairingly said, "Am I supposed to?" He pulled his hand away from hers, _absence of contact_. _His heat can brand skin._

Slightly hurt by his actions, she turned away from him and stared out into the streets and began to drum her fingers against the table cloth. From a distance, there was a man, gelled-back, black hair, wearing a pressed business suit, walking towards the same street lamp where the previous brunette woman had vanished. Moments later, he was gone too. _Two and two makes four. That man is-_

At the exact time the revelation hit Ariadne that the man was a projection of Arthur, Cobb sighed and said, "I think we're done here," and called the waiter over for the check.

_Seven. 7_

Once again, she couldn't bring herself to talk to him again, nor could she look at him in the eye. Her mind recycled over this new piece of information which was like a puzzle piece that she was trying to place. _The projection of Arthur was there but Cobb couldn't see him. What does this imply? Why was Arthur hiding?_

Ariadne sat on the railings of a bridge of steel and wood. At three o'clock, Cobb leaned over the side, watching the sea and the tides. She blinked and shifted her weight back. _How did I come here? _The roar of the waves over the rocks battled against the cry of the gulls, flying in groups of twos and threes. The regular sound patterns, she admitted, were calming. Maybe this explained why her mother held love for the CDs that broadcasted nothing but nature sounds.

_I don't remember how I got here. I think I walked but I'm not positive. _

Maybe this was Cobb's way of apologizing, maybe it wasn't. She huffed and crossed her arms as ocean spray sprinkled over her back. _Honestly, it's impossible to accurately read him._ The man in question was pensive. The sun's rays caused his features to develop a yellow glow, his eyes (it was always about his eyes) stared unblinkingly at the sinking red ball. She saw the breathtaking sunset in the reflection of a beach-house window, a pastel of orange, red and purple and the clouds were lined with similar warm colors.

Ariadne rocked her feet back and forth on a lower rail. _I already apologized. _She lamented. _Maybe it's all over, right now. He just doesn't want to be rude. He's too complicated, I just... I just can't._ Should she give up now? She was barely a few days into this trip and the whole team, Arthur, Eames, Yusuf, Saito, wouldn't be too happy if she returned empty-handed. They would understand: she's only Ariadne, and Cobb, well… Dom Cobb is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. How can one worm into the man's life? Ok, she did it once, but that was only when his barriers had been drastically lowered. He hadn't expected her at all. _Should I be proud or ashamed?_ She brushed a stray hair out of her face. _Too nosy for my own good?_

The golden bishop was in her hand: balanced weight.

Her name was Ariadne, named after the princess who gave aid to Theseus to navigate through the Labyrinths that held the Minotaur. Ariadne of the kingdom called Reality created mazes; she knew their routes and their exits. Each one was her brainchild; she remembered and held all of them precious. Supposedly, she has to lead Cobb out of Limbo, the ultimate maze of twists, turns and dead ends.

It would be easy to give up on this quest. _Find a high rise building, get to the roof and step off-_

"You should stay the night with me."

_What? _"What?" That statement had come out of nowhere and slammed into her mental blind spot. 'Shock' and 'stunned' would be euphemisms of what she was feeling. _I should add 'bipolar' to the list of things I need to know about Cobb,_ she grumpily thought.

The man waved his hand carelessly and cheerfully reassured, "it's ok, the kids are gone and I live alone. It would be nice to have guests over." His tie was hanging off a shoulder and his cuffs were undone as were the first few buttons of his shirt.

"I can't do that," She stammered, "I'll be intruding into your life, more than I have already. I'm a stranger." _How could he be so casual about this?_

"The perfect stranger." He grinned and gave her a knowing, hooded glance, "which you know you aren't, or you never would've named me as your sole relative. My job is to look after your well-being. Besides," he continued with the force of a freight train, "I get the feeling that you have no home here. Am I right?"

She miserably nodded and placed her head into her hands, her elbows balancing on her knees. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He smoothly replied, "I think it is I who should apologize." He turned and rested his back against the rails, facing the same direction as her. They watched the cars and trucks flit by, leaving after images and horizontal streaks of color. The soft ache that Ariadne had felt in her chest since she entered Limbo grew stronger. "Why is it that I feel like I've known you for a long time?" She took it as a rhetorical question. "Granted the familiarity is intriguing enough," he contemplated, "you've hinted at secrets that you thought I should figure out and I'm still waiting for the majority of them. Yet, despite how frustrating your actions are, you radiate this aura of trust around you. I feel like I can put my entire faith in you."

She didn't really know how to answer that, having never known that he did trust her. She always had the impression that he had seen her as a liability, privy to his darkest secrets. She would have akin herself as his guardian, but now it felt like the roles have been skewed.

"Ariadne?" She blinked out of her reverie and looked up, flushing in embarrassment. Cobb arched an eyebrow.

"Yeah?"

He extended an open hand, "What do you say?"

_Eight. 8_

For the hundredth time, she shifted positions under the duvet; the air was hot and heavy, causing her to break out in sweat. Maybe she should've argued more vehemently against Cobb's invite, she should've told him that she had some rare case of insomnia and that really, she might as well sit in an abandoned park and wait for the moon to pass and the sun to rise. At the very least, she should've told him that she had the tendency to sleepwalk… or not, that might cause him to lock the guest room door. Small rays of moonlight slipped past the curtains and onto the edge of her bed. Her hands fell over her eyes. The digital clock on the nightstand read eleven-thirty; she deemed it late enough and sat up, her legs raring to move.

The wooden floor was wonderfully cool against her soles but it groaned under her weight. She froze, arms hanging at her sides. D_on't wake up, oh god please don't wake up. _All was still. The furniture was straight lines and shades of black, where Noir films meet Cubism. Her hand grazed the wall as she felt her way across the room until she brushed against the doorknob. _Bingo. _With deliberate care, she turned the knob, pulled. She imagined herself as a ghost with eyes and mouth as black ovals; gliding through the doorway like the ground was ice.

A dark hallway greeted her with familiarity, she had been here before. _Cobb's subconscious._ The metal elevator however wasn't here. She shuffled up to a closed door and lingered before it. She pressed an ear against the wood and strained to listen- heavy, slow breathing, REM sleep. She walked on.

It didn't matter that she was barefoot, or dressed in nothing but Cobb's old t-shirt and shorts ("I was about to throw them out anyways. They're comfortable and you need something to wear since your belongings are still in the dryer.") No need to worry because she was in Limbo where his projections are as private and impersonal as he is. All she wanted to do was walk around, take a harmless walking tour without the brochures, explore like Marco Polo. She stepped out into the street and broke into a loose jog.

The number of projections in the area decreased exponentially to the increasing distance she placed between herself and Cobb. The streets and some late shops were none-the-less lit up like a normal city, except for the fact that from what she could see, all of them were empty. At the end of the road was an office building whose bright windows were arranged so it looked like a crying face was plastered on its side. As she watched, some lights shut off and others lit up so the crying face turned happy again. Happy, sad, happy, sad, etc. A smile tugged at the edges of her lips.

Past the edifice was another unusual structure, possibly five stories tall and horribly familiar. _The Penrose triangle_ she gasped softly. Feeling the urge to get up close and personal, she eagerly searched for a suitable route to the impossible shape and felt disappointment when there was none. _No way to clear the fence. _There weren't any roads that would allow her to walk around either. A billboard by the configuration read, 'Under construction.' She snorted in disbelief. _Maybe until tomorrow; I can wait._

The ground crunched as she stepped back and lifted her right foot to flick off a stubborn bit of gravel. Across the street was a chocolate and bakery shop with the 'Open' sign against the door. She ventured in, the silver bell above her head rang twice as she peeked in, head first. The place had an Art Deco touch to it but with red leather cushions and tacky yellow wallpaper. The posters were all framed with gold and were vintage photos of Clara Bow and Mary Pickford in different alluring poses that were, strangely enough, safe for an entire family to enjoy. Plucking a newspaper from the stand at the entranceway, she picked a large booth second from her left and sat down, giddy with delight. It smelled sweet. The speakers at the corners of the shop played Edith Piaf's _La Vie En Rose_.

_This is a part of Cobb's project; _she surmised as she flipped the paper open, _this is what is in his mind..._ The majority of the articles were inked or scratched out except for the word 'Forget' which appeared every four lines or so… _Il me dit des mots d'amour. Des mots de tous les jours… _For a minute, she stared, unable to comprehend what was before her, and then she set the newspaper down and slid out of the booth, ignoring the chill at the base of her spine and the horror pitting at the stomach. She moved toward the bar and sat on a high stool, "Hello?" She inquired, tapping her nails against the countertop.

No answer. She was half-expecting a waiter or waitress gliding toward her from the backdoor on retro skates. Taking a menu from the stack at the end of the bar, she opened it apprehensively… It was a normal menu. _Thank god. Ok… um… I could get a slice of German Chocolate Cake… or Red Velvet. The chocolate covered strawberries look especially delectable but the cookies look so cute, they have hearts on them. How could anybody not want them?_ _Not quite sure how I'll do this, there aren't any workers nor do I have any money. _She hummed along to the French song as she browsed the selection. _It's ok to pretend that I'm getting something sweet._

A clinking sound jolted her back to her senses. She craned her neck and looked over the bar- nobody; she leaned back and stared at the booths- nobody. She looked down and nearly screamed: a small plate with two squares of toffee greeted her, placed artfully where one slightly overlapped the other. She pinched herself, it was still there. She lifted the plate and placed it back onto the granite counter- _clink._ Confusion and panic reared its ugly heads. There wasn't anybody in the shop, she saw no one, she heard no one, and she heard nothing but the plate of toffee placed two feet from her person.

Was this place _haunted_? Why, of all things, a haunted vintage bakery?

_I don't even like toffee._

None the less, in order not to offend whatever supernatural dream-like apparition that resided in this place, she nibbled a corner and scrunched up her face. S_till don't like toffee._

She grabbed a napkin and began the arduous task of wiping the taste from her tongue. She paused in mid-motion. "Err. Thank you, shop." She felt silly saying it to thin air, but toffee usually doesn't appear out of nowhere. Her mother had stressed courtesy above all else. Severely freaked out, she backtracked to the door, the silver bell rang again, and she was once again hit by a blast of cool-ocean breeze. Edith Piaf's singing faded into background noise as she faced the deserted streets, unsure of any particular direction to take and where it would lead her. A tumble-weed rolled by a crosswalk as the traffic sign turned red. Throwing one last look at the bakery, still deciding whether she wanted to return or not, she turned right and set down her improvised path.

It got even colder; she cursed herself for not thinking ahead and getting a jacket. Her toes wiggled to bring blood and feeling to them. Her mind moved on to other matters. _Why would Cobb stay if his kids were gone? How long has he been alone? _A mourning dove crooned on the ledge of a balcony in an apartment. She tucked her fingers under her armpits. _But when I was in the hospital, he implied that his kids were staying with him and that they were much younger than anyone college bound. Does that mean that his sense of time is gone too?_

She groaned as her mind tried to rationalize away the inconsistencies, a headache began to sprout. _Maybe he's just an incredibly doting father._ She shoved her fingers into her pockets and shivered.

She rounded a corner too quickly and bumped into a solid body. Slightly disoriented, she mumbled, "Oh. I'm sorr-." Before she realized that two things were wrong about this situation: first, there shouldn't be any of Cobb's projections in the vicinity and second, the projection of Mal shouldn't even exist. Ariadne's eyes widened and her mouth moved to finish her sentence but no sound came forth.

Mal was dressed warmer than she was and still fashionable to boot, a short coat with a fur trim, a pencil skirt and stilettos. Ariadne could imagine the contrast they made, standing side by side, and felt completely inferior. The elder woman crossed her arms and shot an imposing stare, "what are you doing here?" she quietly asked. Her voice was still melodious with a hint of a foreign accent; it hasn't changed since Ariadne had last seen her.

Despite her fight or flight response screaming for action, Ariadne forced her body not to step back, "I'm trying to bring your husband out of this maze." She was amazed at how stable her reply was. _How is she still here? _Her mind cried. _She shouldn't be here!_

With hardened eyes, as if sensing her thoughts, Mal moved forward, "Who do you think you are, pulling Dom out of his happiness?" The woman held herself proud and tall, the beautiful and the alluring epitome of femme fatale. It was no wonder Cobb was attracted to her. In a way, Mal was like her husband; her voice drastically lowered whenever she spoke with passion, her expression was hard to place unless one knew where to find the small keys, which were her eyes. They were cold, like the chill she's feeling on her ankles.

"I'm-."

"You're not important." Mal bent down and whispered gently, as if trying to break bad news, "you're an introverted girl with no parents." She leaned forward to cradle Ariadne's cheek with a manicured hand. "What hope can you have to save him if you can't even save yourself?"

_(Little kids were dancing around her, holding hands as they gleefully sang, "What a freak! What a freak! What a freak!")_

"Shut up." Ariadne muttered. She pushed away the alien feeling and shook her head, "Cobb needs to go back to reality, his kids, his real kids, and everyone there is waiting for him."

"But he doesn't want to go back. Have you ever thought of that possibility?" Heels clicked on the pavement. Mal walked past her and stood on the curb, looking down at the storm drain. Shivering at a subtle breeze, Ariadne pulled out her golden bishop and cradled it close to her chest. _Shut up. Please be quiet._ "When he's perfectly happy in his own world, where everything is going just as he had wished, he doesn't even want to remember?"

(The newspapers were black except for the words 'Forget. Forget. Forget. Forget. Forget…')

Ariadne breathed in a shuddered breath, _Shut up. Please be quiet. Shut up. Shut up. _The bishop was balanced in her hand but it was hers and only hers. "Do you want to destroy his little world, the only place where he's accepted, because of your selfish desires?" Her words hurt, stabbing pain into her back and out her front. She envisioned blood seeping out her front, staining Cobb's old t-shirt. "He belongs here." Her knees buckled as each word hammered a nail into herself. _Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. _"Ariadne?"

"It's not true. You're wrong," speaking softly; Ariadne shut her eyes tightly and imagined that Mal's voice was miles away where she can't hurt her_. _She has to be strong. _She's not real. She's not real. _Ariadne clasped her hands together with the bishop between then and mouthed the words. _Please be quiet. _

"You want something from him, don't you?" _Please be quiet. Please be quiet. Please be quiet. _"But you know that you don't deserve anything he has to offer…"

After some time passed, seconds, minutes, hours, a mourning dove hooted. Ariadne opened her eyes and saw that she was alone once more.

_Nine. 9_

He heard her return, though unlike her exit, she wasn't trying too hard to stay quiet. Her footsteps indicated that she didn't so much creep back into the guest room as stumble blindly across the hall. He heard her stop in front of her door. He heard small hitching breaths and wondered if she was actually going to knock. But no, like before, she continued on.

Click: her door opened. Click: her door closed.

He pushed the covers back and left the warm confines of his bed. A minute later, he stood outside her door, his hand poised to knock and to ask if she was alright but the sounds of muffled sobs froze his arm.

_She's leaning against the doorframe. _He touched the door with his finger tips and dragged them across to the doorknob. S_he's so close and yet so far. I don't know if I'll ever be able to reach her with such a barrier between us._

_She once told me to not to lose myself._

_She said that her name is Ariadne._


	3. 10 to 15

Author's Note: With all the moss, lichen, and shrubbery there, the arctic tundra is _bouncy_. It smelled of Labrador Tea and there were cranberries, crowberries, and blueberries in great abundance. If Eden ever maintained a 55 degree Fahrenheit climate, this would be it. Best fifteen minute rest stop of my life. Anyways- this chapter- I had a hard time writing this, I hope it doesn't show …

**Beta: swampophelia**

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Ten. 10_

Ariadne spent the day outdoors reading old Architecture texts that Cobb had lent to her right before he had set out to the hospital, making a passing remark that, "These should be sufficient to amuse you till Miles comes back." He left the house shortly and acted reluctant to talk, leaving her to stare at the menacing volumes, baffled because she didn't recall telling him that she was studying Architecture (not dream related) in this realm.

The books were hardcover; the stack was half her weight and each with evidence of well-worn years and the wooden bench groaned under their added load. A particularly thick tome sat in her lap, opened to a page that had margins filled with slanted scrawls of hints and advice. _Cobb's handwriting, perhaps, _her mind deduced, _once upon a time, Cobb was also striving to be an architect. _It was too hard to perceive and she released the thread. There wasn't a cloud up in the sky and it was nearly noon and yet, her cheek was cool to touch. _Hours of sunlight and not one evidence of a burn unless the dreamer wanted one_, she marveled. Her gaze flitted to the photo of the St. Pancras Midland Grand Hotel that was used as a bookmark.

When she was a little girl, she used to read encyclopedias in her spare time and even today, she's a bit unsure as to how normal that was for a child. So she wasn't interested in the TV or the other kids on the block that tried cajoling her into their games, at least she had the awe-inspiring pictures. Each building was a world in itself too; separate from its neighbors- the Gothic Chapel in Peterhof, Villa La Rotonda, the Basilica of San Lorenzo, she could go on. They were the minds of its creators, what they envisioned; they were little bits and pieces of a person constructed in a space with the dual elegance of mathematics and aesthetics. _Louis Sullivan is a douche._ Her mind grumbled, _utilitatis et venustatis._

One day, Dream Architects will have similar debates with one another: Form or Function? There will be Architects like Arthur and there will be Architects like her. Classy or Practical? She believed in the slightly out-of-date rules. You are the creator of this world: ergo, you are this world: ergo, you put your best self forward for the public. In dreams, you have the power of making the impossible, things that can never bear its own weight in reality, nothing vernacular. Towering art that should have fell the moment it existed. Why would you dare to be reasonable?

She turned the page and heard the train roaring by a block away. A small child was laughing by the swings, but when Ariadne looked up, there was no other living being save for a spotted bird perched on the metal bar. She took out her golden bishop and rolled it around in her palm. The lark peered curiously at her but did not fly off and the child's voice began to sing a song.

"Alouette, gentille alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai la tête. _Je te plumerai la tête. _Et la tête. _Et la tête._Alou-."

Ariadne shut her eyes and slapped her hands over her ears before she could hear ripping sounds. After a few minutes, she hesitantly cracked open an eye. Two small feathers were lying on dry dirt. Oddly enough, the event triggered a memory of when she first entered Limbo, where decayed buildings crumbled into the sea, like glaciers caving.

_Eleven. 11_

Cobb was able to make pleasant small talk at the dinner table but he didn't extend it anywhere beyond those courtesies. She often wondered if she had stretched her stay too thin but he repeatedly shot down her suggestions to leave. Her nights were spent alone wandering the desolate streets of Limbo with no additional incidents and her days were spent alone in the park with her studies because, what else was there to do? Before the new architectural books, days and nights had blended into ocean water and crashed on the rocks, pulverized into little bits of sand. There was a period of stasis, merely the man trying to get used to her presence, and more days passed and more buildings fell into the sea. That was, perhaps, weeks, or even months, ago. But at least these days she could talk to Cobb, discuss topics with him, and feel that rare sense of camaraderie that would burst from her heart at the most inopportune moments. The man had a talent of being utterly open at the same time putting an invisible wall up that one wouldn't notice until one walked into it.

Nights were long walks past Cobb and Mal's dilapidated old homes on the wharf. The singing in the park had extended to other parts of the city. _Je te plumerai. _The next day, it was a seagull, then a sparrow, then another lark, and then a raven before there was a break in routine.

The morning was an unusually cold one, so cold that she found goose bumps over her shoulders. She, in her half-awakened state, decided to investigate the faint smell of burnt eggs because Cobb's breakfast, as far as she knew, usually consisted of cold milk and cereal. Ariadne took it upon herself to cook dinner every day and lunch on weekends. _Getting Cobb near any stove is… is… well, you might as well have the Fire Department on standby. I don't even know how he survived when he was running across the world._ She padded barefoot to the kitchen, dressed in Cobb's old t-shirt. And there, she saw a strange sight.

…_Ok. _Her thoughts struggled to work themselves out as she pinched the skin between her eyes._ Limbo is able to bend time, I suppose._ _I wonder what explanation Cobb will give. Most likely he'll be puzzled and will say that it's always been like this and will always be like this. I shouldn't ask him. We might have a repeat of the 'you don't know who Arthur is' episode._ Two kids, a boy and a girl, James and Phillipa, were sitting at the breakfast table clinking their knife and fork together, giggling. They were young kids, the elder sibling of six years and the younger of four. Dimly noting that the girl's laughter was identical to the invisible one in the park, Ariadne cautiously toed the threshold and cleared her throat, "You seem to be failing, Cobb."

Phillipa hauled herself halfway over the table and chirped, "Maman always cooked. Whenever she's gone, we buy from diners." Cobb spun around, holding his spatula which was covered in bits of eggs, in a ready position, before relaxing and grinning sheepishly. The smell of blackened foods was pungent. Running a hand through her hair, Ariadne stared at Cobb with the most blank set accusation in her expression, _what do you think you're doing? _Cobb wordlessly shrugged and raised his arms in surrender.

Ariadne sniffed the air again _urgh_ and rubbed her eyes, muttering, "I'll open the windows. Meanwhile, _you." _Cobb lifted an eyebrow. "Don't touch _anything_." As she clicked the hatch loose, pulled up and breathed a small melody piped up from the two kids. Making her way to the stove to salvage whatever she can, she side-glanced at Cobb and found him indulging the kids by singing along with them. She rubbed her hands together and gently shooed Cobb to the table.

Moments later, "Omlette, gentille omlette. Omlette, je te mangerais. Je te mangerais les oeufs. _Je te mangerais les oeufs. _Et les oeufs. _Et les oeufs._Omlette…." _Cobb has a really nice voice, _she smiled with her back to the happy family. She prodded the new breakfast on the frying pan, added pepper, and flipped them over. "Je te mangerais fromage. _Je te mangerais fromage. _Et fromage. _Et fromage…" _Cobb's tone came from his chest, baritone and lovely. _I can go to sleep listening to him._ That thought was mentally squashed down.

"Thank you, Auntie Ari," James said without any prompting and bits of egg sprinkled the table. Phillipa rolled her eyes but repeated his sentiments through a glass of milk. Cobb motioned Ariadne to sit by him. "If Daddy kept cooking," James continued on a half-serious note, "he would've stopped and we would've had candy for breakfast." Phillipa solemnly nodded, waving her fork to cast sunlight into the inner parts of the living room.

"His favorite candy."

_Oh?_ Ariadne tilted her head sideways and did not look at the man in question, "Would it have been toffee?" She guessed, lips twitching ironically.

The children blinked owlishly at her. "How do you know?"

Ariadne's fork froze halfway to her mouth. The omelet slowly plopped back onto the plate. _…think…_ _and don't say "the candy had appeared artfully placed on a platter before me one night." _"He… looks the type…?" She finished on a flat note coupled with a confused look. Mirth had crept into the corners of Cobb's mouth and the children had started snickering. She felt her face heat up and ducked her head under her curtain of hair.

…Je te plumerai les ailes._ Je te plumerai les ailes. _Et les ailes._ Et les ailes. __Alouette… _

Try to put this into perspective- an Architect of dreams has to be vivid and detailed, Macro-level to micro level. Nothing can be off. A good Architect means no mistakes. "A good Architect," Arthur had said at their old workstation, recalling a distasteful memory, "means anticipating that the Target might rub his damn cheek against the carpet to check that it's wool and not polyester." Limbo is the epitome of an alternate universe and if someone were to pluck its head off, to pluck its wings… If Cobb were to leave; _but Cobb didn't want to leave. So why is this song in Limbo?_ …_Children, not adults._ Ariadne leveled a calculating stare at her cup of milk. _La Vie En Rose_ was sung among the adults.

An hour later, Cobb left for work, the dishes were cleaned, James was scribbling enthusiastically into his drawing pad, and Phillipa was playing with Legos on the table. Ariadne sat with the young girl and watched as she stacked green and purple blocks to make a mini cottage, her textbooks lay forgotten at the side as Phillipa enthusiastically made construction noises. "I'm making our pretty little house that I wanted." The girl announced, rolling a Lego train by the house, "Because we need a new one because Daddy is disconnected with us."

Ariadne absentmindedly waved a hand over Phillipa's work; the train turned into a perfect model steam train miniature. The young girl clapped her hands and squealed in delight. "Your father isn't disconnected with you, he loves you very much," Ariadne corrected her as the locomotive pushed forward, issuing a small stream of black clouds into the air, as rails formed beneath its wheels.

"You're really good at this." Cobb's daughter said admiringly. A small hand flitted over the black train and turned it back into its Lego version, "It's not about parents, Auntie Ari. You know what I am talking about." Shuffling noises appeared on Ariadne's left, James stared up at her with doe eyes, resting his chin on the table. "Do you know what we are, Auntie Ari?" Phillipa leaned her elbows on the table and grinned impishly, "Tell us what we are, me and Jamie, Auntie Ari." James made a happy noise and made a grab for the train, unfortunately his arms were too short. Fingering her golden bishop in her pocket, Ariadne stared critically at the two kids. _They aren't kids… _

"Projections."

"Daddy's projections." Phillipa beamed.

_Twelve. 12_

The great feat of the larger than life Penrose Triangle was still under construction. She huffed in annoyance and blew her bangs out of her eyes, surveyed the endless field of high-rises and heard the distant sounds of calving buildings. She had easily broken into an empty penthouse, well furnished with clues of occupancy but no projections as Cobb was too far away. Lounging against one of the balcony chairs, she nursed a drink, hot chocolate in a warm mug, and sighed after each sip, a bit of visible steam drifting out after each breath.

She thought about Cobb a lot, but given the situation, it was impossible to not think about Cobb for too long. He was the man who showed her… all of this. The possibility to make entire worlds, achieve the impossible, with all that, she can't imagine herself sitting at a desk in college listening to the professor's lectures, it would be too torturous. _He changed my life; he changed who I am. He's reduced to a dinner mate at the family table, joking about co-workers whom I've never heard of and trading dream ideas. _

Endlessly he had praised the inner mind, "Ingenuity, imagination, belief. The feelings of Godhood are sometimes too addicting, Ariadne, when you have the choice to hold the world in your palms. A repetition where supply meets demand at the same time the demand supplies." He had placed his hands inadvertently on hers and gently squeezed them. The rich scent of warm honey milk had lulled her into a state of semi-awareness; she had returned a gentle smile and nodded for him to continue. It was his inner heat, his passion, which could be felt literally, "Pure creation." And when he pulled back, she missed his touch so much that it hurts. They bonded over the merits of being an Architect, but that was about it.

The sliding door behind her opened, she didn't react though she knew exactly who the newcomer was. The chill down her back told her enough. "Hello, Ariadne. Do you mind me here?" Without looking back, Ariadne slowly placed her mug down by her feet and leaned forward in her chair, feeling very exposed. _Please don't let her be holding a weapon. _Buildings in Limbo creep steadily forward to the edge of the shore. "Do you know of your namesake?" Mal asked casually, her voice caressing each word, "There are some beliefs that you're a weaving goddess, a creator, punctuated by the fact that your one gift was a ball of thread."

Ariadne had once read in a news article about the intricacies of the human brain concerning meditation and hypnosis. Hypnosis was to concentrate solely on a suggestive voice and feeling inclined to obey the voice while meditation was to ignore all outer stimuli. If you master the technique, you can sit through Woodstock and feel utterly rejuvenated after three days. She squeezed her eyes shut and drew her knees to her chest and tried to lose herself in a self-created darkness but the procedure always seemed to fail around Mal. _Don't look. Don't look._

"Her gift was a gift of love for Theseus to navigate through the Labyrinths to seek the Minotaur. She left her home of Crete to travel with her new love to Athens, but Theseus held no love for the princess and abandoned the sleeping Ariadne on the shores of Naxos." _Cobb doesn't talk about Mal, he has no problems concerning Mal. _Ariadne flexed her fingers, _Theseus married an Amazon queen and even that marriage was short lived._

Other times, she wondered why she was still here, with a shade making her doubt every step she takes and she can't wait to get back to reality, with Cobb or alone. The golden bishop had a balanced weight; it'll stay balanced for a while.

_Thirteen. 13_

At one point, curiosity won over and urged her to seek out Cobb during his work days. She thought she had been as stealthy as a respectable ninja, ducking from one store to another but not acting terribly overt. She only got as far as the café where Cobb had first taken her before he disappeared into a crowd and stayed invisible. Undeterred, the next day, with vows to do better, she kept a closer eye, but to no avail. It's too easy for a person who does not want to be seen, to act as a stranger who blends like gray paint does on the sidewalk. The day that Cobb walked behind a light post and did not reappear on the other side was the day that Ariadne gave up her lofty goal.

She found herself the unofficial babysitter of the _projections_-children, trying to see whether they were more based upon Cobb's memory or Cobb's subconscious. It seemed to be a perfect blend of both; though the two were rather distinguishable with their sudden switch from childishness to astuteness. Phillipa spoke for both herself and her little brother, "Me and James want to go outside." "Me and James want to play games with Auntie Ari." "Push us on the swings, Auntie Ari." "Play Hide-and-Seek with us, Auntie Ari."

The duo loved to explore. On a particularly windy day, they raced along the edge of the beach, vaulting over high-rise building remains till, in the distance, a large Oriental palace perched on a high cliff came into view, in disrepair but in better shape than the rest of the edifices surrounding. James giggled and ran off. Using a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, Ariadne stared at the structure which seemed to set itself apart from the rest of the modernisms, "How was it made?"

"Every year it moves closer." Phillipa tugged on her arm, "The Japanese man lived in it for a long time, till he was an old man. I always wanted to see what was inside but Daddy can't see this place anymore."

_Saito's Limbo? He shared a Limbo with Cobb? _Ariadne resisted the pull, "Why can't he?"

"He lost all of his radical notions." Ariadne blinked, _What?_ She looked around the shore for any passage up to the magnificent castle. There were shells and starfishes lining the shores, low tide, and the white waves noisily lapped at the sand as if greedily slurping it. A figure laid face down on the horizon where the land and water met. The figure slowly eased to its knees and immediately doubled over. _Did another dreamer just wash up? _The long hair and feminine form was barely discernible from this distance as the figure limped to the city. She felt another impatient pull on her sleeve and looked down; Phillipa's smile grew, if possible, brighter, "Please? Take a leap of faith."

Was Limbo a universal state where everyone meets where they fall? Was Limbo a never ending world of people who got trapped in the labyrinth, unaware of each other as they moved about? Was she, Ariadne, a part of the system and invisible to the other dreamers as they are to her? She didn't think so, at least, she hoped not. Was that woman a sleeper or a projection? If that woman was a sleeper, what would that mean to Ariadne, would the stranger be willing to help or want nothing to do with her? If that woman was a projection, will she see Ariadne as a threat? And that's the crux of the matter isn't it? _Whether the projections will kill her or not_. Phillipa and James weren't wary at all and the mental image of the kids wielding butcher knives was as laughable as it was nightmare-inducing. _"Daddy is disconnected with us."_ However, if she was to cross paths with Mal again, well, she doesn't want to think about that. _But Mal didn't act murderous. _

They ran through a series of hallways with simple brushstrokes depicting samurais and endless glass cases of antique swords. At the end of the hallway was a painting done on a noble looking Asian family with a familiar, younger looking man on the right. _Yep, that's Saito. _The trio ambled down the stairs that were, once upon a time, impeccably polished, and pushed past a paper screen door and into what looked to be a dining room. The ceiling was hidden under numerous Oriental lamps, lending the entire design elegant. The yellow lights made the floor glow warmly. "Wow," a small voice breathed out. "Cool!" That was James, who ran in and started touching the lightly painted walls.

On the other side of the doorway were two uniformed Japanese guards who didn't move an inch nor blinked. When one waved a hand over their faces, their automatic response was, "Hai, Saito-san." Ariadne slapped the man's cheek. "Gomen, Saito-san."

"They're the remains of a person's mind." Phillipa answered the unspoken question on the other end of the table where a bowl of porridge laid half eaten, "The Japanese Man left but he didn't take everything with him. Sometimes, when a dreamer enters another person's dreams, they leave a part of themselves, sometimes a loose memory, sometimes the subconscious security; other times a mindset or idea." She hesitantly sniffed the bowl and made a face, "Those guards are the disposable security, it's easy to make more. They're footprints. Sometimes, a sleeper will tuck a part of himself into the dream world on purpose. But if you lose a personality trait in another dreamer's head, things will get bad."

"Hey," James pointed, "What's that?"

_A gun._ Ariadne popped opened the chamber. _Empty. _"Nothing important," she murmured. How much faith does it take to allow another to place a gun to your head? Is it different for her because of her unfortunate history with guns? _Every gun has an unfortunate history. You aren't special, Ariadne._

"Daddy was here," James piped up, "The Japanese man stayed here for so long because he was filled with regret but he couldn't die alone because he can't die. Limbo doesn't let you die. So he left when Daddy made him remember." James looked as if he was about to cry, "The safe and the cabinets and the walls are all empty, Philipa. I can't find it."

"I was so sure that it would be here." Phillipa uncharacteristically sighed. "Where could it be?"

"Find what?"

"Daddy's totem."

"We're not connected with Daddy anymore." James mourned, stirring the bowl of mush with the butt of the gun. "He wants to forget. But if he has the totem, then we will know what he knows and we will feel what he feels."

_DID? Dissociative Personality Disorder? _"A life of regrets," Ariadne murmured, staring at the gun that was dripping with porridge. James slid the gun over the table and the gun came to a rest at the center. She moved two steps to the right to make sure it wasn't pointed at her.

"Hai, Saito-san." The monotonous voice of the bodyguard projection rumbled through unmoving lips.

Phillipa rubbed her hands on her pants and declared, "We're done here."

_Fourteen. 14_

One day, the children took her to the train tracks and stood on the railway for no true reason other than to feel it. "On some days," Phillipa informed, "You could hear it coming, you could feel the 'whoosh' feeling, but you can't see it and it isn't there." A man in busboy cap meandered by with a vacant look on his face muttering about schedules and times. She eyed his dirt brown duffle bag until it was out of sight and added offhandedly, "I like your hair."

Ariadne self-consciously tugged at the loose strands, "Thank you." She ascertained as much after lazy days of the children running their hands through and braiding her locks through endless hours. Once, she took Cobb's kids to the beach and meant to let them run off while she let her hair down, but to her surprise, they chose to stay with her on the blanket. _James said that they felt like waves by the sun, whatever that means. _She raised her arms to keep her balance on the rails and began walking southward like a tightrope walker, hearing the two children mimicking her. _The train was in the past and she was merely walking alongside a footprint._

"Do you know how long you're staying with Daddy?" James chirped behind his sister.

Ariadne fondly ruffled the boy's mop on his head. "It depends."

"But you're not leaving _us_ right?" James demanded.

"I suppose not," she replied with amusement tracing her voice, "I don't think your father would let me leave." Last weekend, Cobb had taken her to a department store to upgrade her wardrobe from what came off her back when she first arrived to Limbo. The whole situation was highly awkward, because she couldn't help but feel that even if the helpful storeowners were critiquing and giving helpful advice, that they were all projections of _Cobb. _

It's like having Cobb tell you that greens and blues are the "colors that bring out your inner beauty, darling. Oh, try these. They're shoes I would die for." Cue wrist-flip and a flash of manicured nails.

Looking like the regular husband with two full bags in each arm, Cobb had turned and spoke seriously, "I won't let you go at least until Miles gets back. It's too dangerous out there and you're…" _A young and beautiful woman? _Ariadne ironically thought with a humorous smile, prudently deciding that this would not be the best time to discuss her midnight excursions. Cobb made restricted gestures with his arms and shoulders before helplessly shrugging, "You know. At least stay till Miles gets back. Then you can go wherever you want as long as you tell me that you found a stable home." He paused minutely as a car drove by and admitted, "But I would prefer you stay." His tone implied that he didn't know why, "I know you might be uncomfortable and that it might be mundane at times and you asked me many times if you were overextending your visit. But I would really prefer if you would stay." Whatever that declaration meant, she was touched.

"Daddy doesn't like _other people._" One could hear the italics in the boy's sentence. James was correct: it took time for Cobb to warm up to people. There was a fine line between warmth and charm; charm was what happened whenever Cobb meets strangers, he smiles enough to make the other relax. However, Ariadne had sensed the stiffness from his body and hands when the Professor introduced them to each other, the evaluating gaze he had on her and the general feeling that he wasn't impressed with what he saw. "But you're different."

Phillipa jumped off the tracks and spun around the railroad sign. "We want to know why we like you."

"I'm sorry. I haven't the faintest." Ariadne rubbed her temples to stave off a growing headache.

"But there must be a reason why he keeps you around. Other sleepers, other people he knows, he can't tell the difference. Why you?" The girl insisted with narrow eyes.

Why? Why? Why this? Why that? Why did Professor Miles recommend her to his son-in-law? Why wasn't Cobb angry when she pressed the elevator to the lowest floor? She's a being of emotions and feelings, the sixth sense that buzz whenever something seems off. But she can't read people and often wondered whether she should be thankful.

A small hand rested on Ariadne's forearm. "Don't leave. We like you."

"_Ariadne's a problem child, I'm uncertain as to how to deal with her." "…problem child…" _The tracks were cool to the touch and left rust on her fingertips; she rubbed them together and inspected them again. "_Why do you have to be special?" _Rocks crumbled underneath her feet. Details were important for an Architect. She concentrated on the sounds of the satisfying crunch. You always had to distract yourself when the voice-memories come back because you can't tell anyone. _"Why you?" _And maybe…_ "Why you?" _If she closed her eyes, the voices would go away.

_Fifteen. 15_

Bare feet on pavement, she used to do this as a young girl, but as a young girl, she used to run. The ground was clean of dirt, trash, and glass, it was unusual but inviting enough to not even consider socks. The stars in the night sky were haphazardly arranged; Cobb never studied Astronomy beyond Polaris. "Psst!" The funny thing was that she wasn't surprised, too many strange happenstances had occurred for her to be relatively shocked at any oddity. The best way to stay sane in this place was to obey the code _Go with the Flow, _and hope that the flow goes where one wants it to go. However, behind a streetlight stood two small faces of the last duo she expected to see.

James and Phillipa were no more than two small mounds of layered coats. "What are you two doing here?" Their clothing was sealed tight like a cruise ship against the onslaught of chilled rain. "You're too young to be up at this hour, you might get sick."

"Uh huh." Phillipa cast a doubtful eye on Ariadne, who wore an open wrap, pajamas underneath, a scarf, and no shoes or socks. The young girl straightened up and said imperiously, "Well, we decided to follow you anyways. And there's nothing you can do about it, so… nyah." Someone once said that human stubbornness can be stronger than the greatest stone fortresses. Ariadne folded her arms and shook her head; Phillipa didn't budge an inch. Cobb saw no wrong in his darling angels, thought they could do no wrong, leaving Ariadne to exasperatingly wonder exactly what delusions he lived under before smacking her forehead in the classic _duh_ fashion. Small tumbleweed blew comically across the street.

James yawned.

Five minutes later, Ariadne found herself with two little followers chatting animatedly about ice cream and cartoons. Ten minutes later, after failing to find the Vintage bakery, Ariadne realized that she was hopelessly lost and started looking around for shelter. On a corner street sat a two-story bookstore with posters on the walls offering a hot cup of coffee for bargain prices. The inside was toasty; there were no customers or staff roaming inside, but that was to be expected. The books were sorted alphabetically by author. Ariadne immediately took to the stairs and looked for the Classics. "James likes Pistachio. Can you believe it? Mint Chocolate Chip is obviously better, right Auntie Ari?" Phillipa, a source of background music variations with her inflexions, rattled off without pause.

A finger swept over _Candide, ou L'Optismisme_ which, surprisingly, held a good translation. _Cobb reads Voltaire… _"No, Pistachio has that original taste to it." James grinned triumphantly at his sister, who snarled playfully back. The second floor held a number of plush sofas that the trio quickly took advantage of, each sinking into their respective spots like an animal into quicksand. As soon as Ariadne got comfortable, Phillipa secured a death-grip on her right arm while James laid his head in her lap and started to fall asleep.

"How long do you stay out?" Cobb's daughter asked, beginning to braid Ariadne's hair.

"Until I get tired enough to stay in my room the whole night without going crazy," was the nonchalant reply, accompanied by a page turn.

"It won't hurt if you sleep."

"I'd rather not take the chance." A bulb lit up atop of her head. She looked up and blinked at the new idea, placed her book away from James' head and inquired, "Can you make totems in Limbo to make sure that you're in Limbo and not in a deeper dream state?" She got a most peculiar look in return. "Right, stupid question." There was nothing beyond pure subconscious.

The girl snickered, "You're forgiven. You're still young." _There's a difference between age and innocence, all three of us are examples of that. _James started to snore loudly.

"Says you." _I think I'll be sad when I see that in reality, I won't be able to banter with them. _That thought makes this realm that much more appealing. "_I did not remain so for long; this flower, which had been reserved for the handsome Prince of Massa Carara, was plucked by the corsair captain. He was an abomination, and yet believed that he did me a great deal of honor." _Those lines were read over and over again _and hell was paved with good intentions. _She couldn't read any farther. After gently nudging James to reawake, she shut her book and pushed it back to its home in the shelves. "All right you little devils, time to go home."

"What devils?" A small hand made a grab at an old _Times _magazine and turned to the comics and quotes page. "Now why would you say that? Meanie." Two pairs of sneakers padded down the stairs and headed to the exit. The air blew their hairs back and renewed the sting on their cheeks. After making sure that the children were properly bundled, they set off into the streets, to look for a familiar landmark that would point to Cobb's house.

"The Devil never sleeps," there was a quick glance at the Penrose Triangle in the distance. _Still under construction? _"Neither does you two."

When another howl in the wind picked up, Phillipa buried her chin into her collar, "We're special." James ran around in circles with two fingers atop his head like horns. "We're Daddy's happiness. Pride and Joy, that's us two." A small hand was placed over a small heart.

"That's quite a burden," Ariadne habitually looked on both sides of the street before crossing. A skylark flew down and perched upon a stop sign. "Is every other projection as symbolic as you?"

Phillipa shrugged, "I dunno. We're all disconnected, I told you that before."

They navigated through the maze- left, right, a corner, right again, a dead end, backtrack, left, and found themselves exactly where they had start off. Ariadne proposed to scribble the roads that she remembered onto the sidewalk to keep track; Phillipa whipped out a piece of chalk from her pockets. Right, corner, forward, right, they came to a fork in the road and chose the direction by flipping a dime. James held a Décor Magazine that he had snitched from the racks from the store and was in the process of ripping it to make paper airplanes. After throwing the plane with an expert arm, James began to chase it down, singing as his legs hurried along. _Alloutte, gentile alloutte. Alloutte, je te plumerai._ No worries made children carefree, under the impression that however bad it gets, adults will always find a way out. Ariadne heard the clipping steps of high heels on pavement and felt imaginary buckets of ice splash down her back. She subtly guided the children down another alley and back out into the main streets.

"I like that song. The difference between the tune and the lyrics are striking. Most songs are like 'Ring around the Rosie,' and 'Miss Mary Mack 'and 'I had a little bird.' They sound innocent," Phillipa wistfully sighed. The sounds of high heels got ever closer; Ariadne paled and walked faster. "Can you tell what's wrong with them?" The rain had stopped and left puddles. Phillipa skipped in front and freely swung her arms in a windmill fashion, "Have you ever been to a place or within a group of people who always got along with each other, that the happiness between them was so constant and forever that it dimmed into contentment and then into this sense of wrongness because perfection never changed? What do you call that?"

The high heels were too close for comfort; Ariadne turned around and tensed. "Get away," she snapped, her guardian instincts flaring as bright as ever.

Sensing that something was wrong, James and Phillipa glanced back. There was a gasp, but it was difficult to tell from who it came from. The thought _mirror opposites _came to mind. Mal wore a stunning, form-fitting red mermaid dress with black trim and matching gloves. She grimly smiled when the kids ran behind Ariadne and cowered. "You," she said serenely with an extended hand, "would call it Utopia, would you not?"

"Auntie Ari, why's Mamam here?" Phillip hugged close, "She's not supposed to be here. She's gone. We made sure she was gone. Daddy made sure. Why is she here?" Her voice grew to near hysterics by the end of her rambling. Ariadne gently hushed her, a wary glance Mal who stood a few meters away.

_She's a siren, one smile can enchant all._ _"To look upon oneself with horror and yet to cling to oneself; in short to caress the serpent which desires us until he has eaten our heart?" _The kids found this all too onerous to comprehend. "Utopia," James said, mesmerized at the sight of the shade, "is Limbo, right?" Mal looked at him with a mix of motherly pride and contempt. "That's," the boy continued belatedly, "what you want to tell us? Do you think people want to live in Limbo forever, Mamam?"

It's not the common man that would fall into Limbo, nor was it really the common savior that would dare to risk time to fish him out. There were a great many modern studies about the world, most unfinished and unsuccessful, comparing brain activity in coma patients, whether they dream lifetimes and forget them all upon waking or whether it's one single second of void. No one really bothered to ask what happens when the patients never wake. Phillipa buried her face in Ariadne's jacket and kept silent. "Daddy won't leave, little ones. He can't hear you, just as he can't quite hear Ariadne, here." Mal bent her knees and leaned down, wind whipped her hair in model-esque disarray; James shrunk back.

"You're wrong." He said childishly as his sister whimpered.

_She might be going into shock. _Ariadne carded her hand through the girl's hair as she mumbled, "She shouldn't be here. Daddy is over her, I know it, I've seen it, I've felt it. Why is she here? I don't want her here."

"Why would you think I'm wrong?" Mal asked gently, "You aren't the ones who keep him here. You leave from time to time as his sense of time jumps years, am I right? One moment, you are old enough to leave him, another moment, you're teenagers, another moment, and you're little children." She smiled in triumph when no one answered and made a _moue_. "Dom's so lonely in his sad little home, an old man past his prime with no humanity save those who don't talk to him. Mentally, he's older than sin. Humans aren't acclimated to live that long. Think. What keeps him here?"

"That's enough," Ariadne pulled James closer, half expecting the other to pull out a knife or gun.

"Or," the shade continued undeterred, "should you be asking whether the answer is in here or whether it is the absence of the answer out there."


	4. 16 to 20

Author's Note: College is here- quick! Everybody, duck and cover! Expect slower updates.

**Beta: swampophelia**

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Sixteen. 16_

"Wait!" _Legs, move faster! She can't disappear into the crowd again_, that would just mean another day wasted. As Ariadne contorted her body in different positions to weave through and around the personal bubbles of other projections, she cursed herself for wearing sandals. "Miss? I just want to talk!" The figure that managed to keep herself just beyond grasp, long brown hair, petite body, was the same figure who she saw washed up on the beaches, repeatedly, and the same who disappeared behind telephone poles, street lights and into alleyways.

Of course the pattern of days that the woman popped up was capricious to put it nicely, but she was the only hope that Ariadne had and the source of one of the most insane hunches that Ariadne had formed. It was a 'What if?' idea that had taken root in her brain that was so bizarre that it spoke volumes of how long she stayed in Limbo when her attitude was a calm repose. There was the off chance that her hunch was correct and maybe this time, she can finally verify her suspicions. But her legs were feeling the stirrings of an acid battery burn and the woman didn't seem to hear her cries. _Failure. _This is normal too.

And it's not really that the dreamer had finally gone over the deep end, but that there were no other paths down the question of 'How to pull Cobb out of Limbo?' to take. So much time has passed, she, who had long given up trying to keep any mock calendar, felt so _old_. The woman was her last desperate grasp but she kept flitting in and out like AN old fashioned television during a lightning storm. Nothing has changed. "Excuse me!" Ariadne reached out and tried to snatch, to grab, to reach… and missed. _Still an enigma._

The projections shifted in the bustling crowd, a series of off gray slideshow pictures against a monochromatic backdrop of high-rises. Their faces spoke of blankness, fuzzy TV screens when the cable is disconnected. "No!" Brown hair disappeared in black suits and dresses. "…Wait. Just want to talk." _Arrgh. _She could punch a hole through a wall in frustration. Instead, like always, she gripped onto her totem and waited for her blind vexation to dull. _There's always tomorrow._

And the day after that, and that, and that, and that, until Limbo sucks her in as well and decides to keep her. Until tomorrows become yesterdays and today stays as today.

_Seventeen. 17_

Routine in Limbo began to take a morbid hilarity, a Twilight Zone twist per se, immediately following her time with the projections of Cobb's children. After the disastrous meeting with Mal, for which Ariadne was severely regretting and, despite the children saying otherwise, all her fault, the duo projections had grown more distant, only appearing perhaps once every ten days. Ariadne never knew it was possible for projections to become emotionally scarred, but this was Cobb's subconscious, which had begun to split apart at the seams and where normality had been shot at multiple times and left for dead. Routine was Architecture texts and the bookstore, which she had already browsed through twice; routine was feeling alone all the time and being bombarded by French music; routine was long walks that should be meaningful and contemplative but wasn't; routine was avoiding train tracks, newspapers, and Mal; routine was never finding out anything about Cobb besides what he was willing to give; routine was time spent with Cobb.

Ebb and flow- they conversed about the most inane topics that they could think of, a mutual love for Architecture, a fascination with aesthetics, some little hobbies, innocent memories of a past life, and miscellaneous. At the end of the dinner, Cobb always took her to the bridge to watch the sun dip into the waters and they would stand there and perceive and she's always getting this feeling that she's missing a convoluted signal from him. Cobb always turned up his collar against the wind, the first few buttons of his shirt undone and Ariadne always allowed the sea breeze to blow her hair back.

Once, for some reason she could not fathom, Cobb turned toward her and gently smiled and she felt a sensation of her stomach plummeting.

Mal had said that she was never going to get anything more than a smile.

Never the less, nothing changed, not even the Penrose Triangle and progress was approaching whatever number divided by zero. She found her interest in the triangle waning exponentially and these days, for some reason, couldn't even bring herself to think about the architecture of the paradox. Every night, she stared at Saito's empty gun that she had stole from his palace and asked herself, _is it time to leave? _And every night: _not yet. There has to be an end. _There was a possibility of going mad in this realm because of the long exposure and the realization that _this is a gilded cage_ and the self-challenging thought: _how long are you willing to self-torture your mental state for another person? _And finally: _how important is this person to you?_

On a specific night, after a particularly emotional draining day at the end of a particularly emotionally draining week of a draining month, where the lack of human contact had proven so irritating, she decided to stay in the guest room the entire night, lest she steps into the city, take a street that leads away from the beach, and dare herself to walk as far as she can. She could go on for days, years perhaps if she wished; there was all the time in the world.

She spent a grueling night sketching and gazing longingly at the empty gun. When the moonlight peeked through the curtains, a bit before midnight, she hugged her totem to her chest and felt her eyes sting. _Dear Diary, _"I'm losing it," she choked out, touching her forehead to the bishop, "I'm doing this to myself. I'm choosing to stay, this is my free will and I'm choosing to stay. There's only Cobb, but he's reduced and broken. It's not enough." Her cheeks and hands felt wet, her chess piece glistened under sheen of tears. Eventually, she was too exhausted to even keep crying. Humanity has limitations, this was hers.

Then, for the first time since the dreamer entered Limbo, she fell asleep, dreamless.

The next day, Professor Miles arrived. He was unchanged since Ariadne had last seen him, even wearing the exact coat and pants ensemble. A part of her selfishly thought that if she knew that this was going to happen, she would've started complaining loudly from the start. Cobb started the introductions, the three of them had a pleasant chat about higher education and the supply and demand of resources to undergraduates, and then Cobb left.

She had suspected that Professor Miles belonged in a projection subgroup similar to Cobb's children's classification, but she wisely didn't restart the conversation. The pause between them was comfortable as she patiently waited for the man to initiate congeniality. The professor didn't disappoint, as after clearing his breakfast plate and his black coffee, he noted and offered, "I'm feeling partial to a walk; care to join me, Miss Ariadne?"

Five minutes later, avoiding roads that held train tracks and there were quite a lot of roads that do, they strolled under archways by the river and stopped on the other side and sat down on a broad bench. The professor ("call me Miles, at the very least") released a sigh and remarked, "The weather today is nice; wouldn't you say? It's good for my old bones." Nodding, Ariadne stretched out and popped a few shoulder joints and slumped back when she heard _Reverie_ by Debussy start to echo in her ears. The elder blinked at her curiously, "My grandchildren told me a lot about you."

"Really?" She dully asked, "James and Phillipa know me for a while now. Is there any reason why you chose _now_ to make an appearance?" Her hand glided over the arm rest and around the curved end and fingered a loose splinter.

"Would you hazard a guess?" She scrunched her brows in thought.

Well, Phillipa had once, with a hint of discomfort, said before she and James embarked on a month long absence, "Children can't stay as children forever, Auntie Ari. Children have to turn into adults before they reverse back to children. It's fresher that way, a change of times." There was some twisted logic in the statement that she supposed applied to her new companion.

The professor chuckled at her response and tapped his cane twice on the pavement, "Time? There is time enough in the world." He ruefully grinned, a trademark of his that held an ironic bearing to the unspoken, "What is there to worry about when time caters every whim? It can rewind and fast forward, it can bend."

"My sanity, Professor."

"It's Miles, my dear, I don't mind." Ariadne reluctantly nodded and tensed her posture. Miles smiled complacently, "Have you ever tried looking at a problem in an entirely different way?" Small leaves, orange and green, began to twitch at her feet like jumping beans. She peeked up at him and tilted her head to stare; the man straightened as the wind howled through the archways, "For example, you shouldn't be asking about time. You should ask, 'what are the elements that facilitated Miles's visit?' and 'Does it have to do with me?'"

…_Does that mean that the walls of his house were thin? How much did I reveal- Oh, he might have heard my nighttime romps and the fact that I didn't go outside and instead started to rant to my totem, which is an inanimate object…_ Ariadne felt her face burn and refused to look any deeper into the implications of this turn of events. "It might."

"He does care about you." She snorted disbelievingly.

"I'm a dreamer; I'm not a part of him. Anyone can recognize a foreign body." _And they attack—like white blood cells fighting an infection. They're going to attack us? Just you, actually._

And her peers used to dance around her. _Nobody likes you; everybody hates you. Nobody likes you; everybody hates you. _It's mildly hilarious that one of her most vivid memories of reality had to be this.

"And keep a foreign body close?" Miles tapped his cane down again, "Unlikely. Not in dream security. The fact that projections haven't been hostile to you means that they recognize you beneath even the subconscious level, even if we are, as a whole, completely disjointed from Cobb. It'll only be when we reunite with him again that the others will attack. Those textbooks, their sagacity, they kept you to him. The children kept you to him. Even when-"

"Even when there is no hope left except for a damnable woman that won't let you get close." She muttered, glaring darkly at some rather affronted looking business men. (Her hands violently twitched when she thought she saw a Mal-like projection past a sweatshop, but it was just a trick of the light.) "Then what are you, the answer?"

"The past, the past through rose-tinted glass. Unfortunately, the past does not make reappearances to the present." He tipped his hat at a random passerby, "I suppose it's unbecoming to be like an ostrich, but Cobb has a penchant for refusing to accept the truth, stubborn to the core. That was my first impression of him when Mallory first brought him to my attention." _Cobb's perception of the first meeting, _Ariadne mentally corrected Miles; _he's a projection so he's not really my college professor. _"And yet, for your sake, I am here."

_Reverie _slowly ended. She blessed the silence. "Does the past have more power than happiness? Can you help me save Cobb?" He heaved a great sigh that spoke paragraphs of explanations of why he couldn't. She hummed noncommittally, "Does that mean that you can help me try to talk to a specific projection? One that Cobb doesn't want to accept?" The dreamer closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

"Who is this person?" Ariadne's face fell as she recalled-

It wasn't long ago. She had accidentally stepped on a stranger's foot in her hurry and drove her elbow into another's ribs to get ahead. The brunette woman was heading to the entrance of the subway station, where many other projections entered and exited from. To Ariadne, the subway station was nothing more than a metal room with no doors but dreams never learned the laws of physics and projections never heeded them. "Please! Excuse me. Sorry. Miss? Excuse me, Miss?" Ariadne had made one last swipe before the woman simply dissolved into the walls. The woman got away, but Ariadne got a scarf. She had stared at the scarf, it was light purple and patterned.

It was _her_ scarf. Well, this must be what it's like when a cosmic safe… piano… falls on you.

(And then, strange as it was, the other day, Ariadne had spotted Arthur, the projection, standing on the balcony of the third floor of a building that had no entrance, unresponsive to any outside stimuli. Arthur had worn his trademark stuffy clothing that he somehow could pull off even on a casual day, but his face was hollow. Any blanker and it would be a clean sheet of skin stretched over the head with a tufT of hair and a chin. She had wondered what that could possibly entail.)

"Ahh," Miles said, tapping the side of his nose. "I can help you with that." Clearing his throat, smiling congenially, Miles stared into her eyes, "Now, Ariadne, I want you to imagine a… bridge, a bridge that will take you home." Under this particular sunlight, Miles' eyes were seafoam blue. _Those are Cobb's eyes. _Ariadne blinked in confusion. As the pair sat there, the ground began to tremble. From the waters rose the Pont Royal Bridge in exact likeness in detail and scale; some projections turned and wandered onto the newly made structure. Small arches underneath the streets and black, old-fashioned street lights decorated every such many meters. The professor raised an eyebrow and smiled, pleased, "Your own subconscious is a talent in itself." He stood up and offered a hand, "Let's head back."

_Eighteen. 18_

Miles left the next day; the projection of the woman was waiting for her by the beach a week later.

Mal had said, "Only humans live in moments. Everything else encompasses and expands and engulfs." It's too easy to remember Mal. Ariadne mentally shook herself back to the present.

The projection wore a yellow sundress, a type that Ariadne could not see herself in. It was so _animated_ and _buoyant_ that it could float on the waves. The projection bent her head, held her arms behind her back, and rubbed her flip-flops together nervously. The first thing the woman said was, "I'm really sorry." The first thing the woman did was run up and attempt to engulf Ariadne in a tight hug but only managing to run through her; she then retreated back several feet in embarrassment, "I'm not usually acknowledged, you know, and it's rare that I can interact in Limbo." _Considering how ghostly you are…_ Ariadne rubbed the back of her neck and tried to quell the goose bumps running down her back. It felt like ice cold mist had whipped right through her torso.

"You're still here."

"I can't be killed by my own maker. I can only be forgotten, and then I'll cease to exist." The woman shrugged helplessly. In harsh light under the sun, she looked solid, but when Ariadne looked down, she could see the sand through her legs. It was as if she was fading.

"How can you stand it?" Ariadne asked, staring sympathetically at the projection, "You're neglected; can you feel it?"

"Well," another round of awkward shuffling ensues, "at first, it was kind of cool. Like from Plato, where he asked what man can do with the power to become invisible, just that sort of privilege. I walk through the streets, even if I don't exist to others, at least I feel like I'm patrolling. You understand me?" Ariadne did. _Movement feels like progress, even if one's moving in a circle._ "But the top helps me maintain control. If I had only one reason to still be here, it would be because of the top."

"You need to leave once in a while," James had informed, pumping his legs in the air to get higher on the swings, "You need to rejuvenate. Like a phoenix but fresher. You burn yourself from Daddy's memories and then you come back, bright as new!" This was the son who giggled and squirmed whenever his father blew noisy kisses into his neck.

"You stayed." Ariadne pointed out, "You never left."

"Cobb needs me." The woman wiped away a tear and sniffed, "I follow that you wanted to see me?" Ariadne remembered nights spent at a desk with a lamp and a 60 watt energy efficient light bulb, making lists of plans, agonizing over different solutions. She stared at the words till her eyes bled, then she turned the page over and stared at the drawing of Cobb's totem spinning over a smooth table.

"Does that mean you can help me?" Her heart sank when the projection shook her head.

"I'm useless."

"But why?" Her voice raised several pitches. She wasn't even grasping at straws now; she was looking for them SO she can grasp. "You sympathize." Waves washed up 'S' shaped wet lines on the sand. With childish idleness, she kicked up some sand; the grains flew straight and beyond the woman. For her actions, Ariadne received a halfhearted glare.

"Because of my state. Cobb doesn't want to remember." The projections stomped her foot, similar to the way Phillipa stomps when she's about to descend into a fit. The other clucked her tongue in disapproval.

"Remembering is different from awareness," Ariadne unconsciously repeated Miles previous statement.

"Yes, but what can I do with this?" The woman sadly reached into a pocket in her dress and pulled out… Ariadne's breath hitched. The spinning top… _She said "top," not as a position but an actual "top." _She could just smack herself for her idiocy. Cobb's pewter spinning top, the totem, was lying innocently in the woman's palm, dulled and fuzzy at the edges. She knew that if she attempted to hold the top, pushing all rules about totem privacy aside, it would fall to the sand _and maybe even beyond._

"That's…"

"It." The projection succinctly finished, "That's it- a kick to a memory. And I'm it too." She sucked in a deep breath and stared at Ariadne; Ariadne stared at herself, "I'm the Truth that Cobb won't ever accept." She tucked the pewter top back into her pocket and straightened the folds of her sundress, "Do you understand why I'm so dysfunctional? When I hold reality in my hand and he can't see me?"

Yes, she understood. During those nights trying to think of an answer, sitting in the vintage café, swinging her legs over the bar stools, trying to think till her brain simply gave out; Ariadne had scowled at the little tricks of the mind and impossible objects. There were the Necker Cube, and the Blivet, and Escher's masterpieces. At 12:01 am, she had thought about _mimesis_ and wondered how good an imitation can stack up to the original.

At present time, she stared at the spot the totem resides and murmured, "A kick by a representation could be good enough." She turned to the projection and stated fiercely, "You're not useless and there's always a solution." Every problem has a resolution, it's why problems are called 'problems' and not 'fuck ups' or 'the Apocalypse.'

"You have a solution?" The projection asked in a suitably unimpressed voice.

"I don't know," Ariadne hotly retorted, secretly surprised by her passion behind her response, "do you think I should have one in order to obtain a reason to hope? Or is the absence of that prospect the reason why you stopped looking?"

Her words hit a mark, the projection looked taken aback and then suitably ashamed, "I've forgotten how time could weaken resolve." The woman shuffled her feet together as salt water licked her heels; the tide was coming in ahead of schedule. Brown eyes met brown eyes, searching for a glint of inspiration. Suddenly, the projection bowed, "Pardonne moi, but it seems you have an idea."

An Idea: a way to get Cobb to _see_ and _know…_ perhaps not _accept, but baby steps are a must in this event_. She pondered over impossible objects and mimicry of an original, an image, a keepsake, a grounding totem. Cobb had once said, "Extraction is all about knowing the target, knowing the target will lead you to the safe, the vault, the cabinet, where the secrets are kept." _Two people can keep a secret if one has forgotten._

"Does it matter if I should have one or not or if it doesn't fly? You should always keep trying," Ariadne tiredly replied. It was another crazy plan, one insane enough that it might work. She supposed that after repeated past failures, she probably wouldn't even blink if Cobb should regress and stop talking to her again. Despite her refusal to answer, the projection nevertheless comprehended.

The woman gave a dazzling smile, "An idea." The other tested the word on her lips before laughing, "Resilient... highly contagious." Ariadne stared at the projection, puzzled, it seemed like the other was reciting from a script. The projection's face had lit up, seemly brightening the evening sky, "Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks." The projection tapped her temple, "right in there, somewhere." Her smile vanished from her face and was replaced by a morose expression, "Be careful, Ariadne. I'll be seeing you."

Ariadne shook her own hand and stared into her own eyes and said to her mirror image, "Yeah, I will."

_Nineteen. 19_

High, giddy laughter jumped from tree to tree in the park as the two kids played tag, dodging waving hands and outstretched fingers. It was Cobb's day off from his mystery job and he had taken everybody to a small sanctuary from urban life and had set up a picnic. He and Ariadne lied on the yellow blanket like contented cats, soaking in the sun. Ariadne's heart raced, _perfect time to implement the plan_. She wasn't quite sure what the source of her fears was: the fear of change, of a rejection, of forever, or all of the above. She gingerly sat up and popped her shoulders and took her time watching James and Phillipa toss a ball back and forth. _This is a crazy idea. Before Inception, no one could've caught me doing this because I couldn't even begin to fathom it. _Cobb had his head propped up by his arms, humming as he watched the clouds in the sky. His eye caught hers and he flashed a playful grin. _Can't hold this back any longer- today's the day._

"How malleable the mind is!" The projection of Truth had proclaimed, dancing on the edges of the beach, "The Targets can try to put up all sorts of defenses, but in a body, they're not the white blood cells, they're antibodies. But once Extraction gets past that, no one can stop us; we can change a person till they're unrecognizable. In the mind, there's no _play back_." As night descended, her yellow sundress turned into a blue evening dress, acting like chiffon, "And what sort of power is that? Isn't it too intoxicating?" Dainty fingers pulled out the pewter top and held it tip to tip, "The World was all before him, where to choose his place of rest." Such melancholic feelings, Ariadne had shivered and pulled her scarf tighter. That was yesterday.

Today, she held a tuna sandwich, "Optical illusions," she pretended to be engrossed in the white bread. Cobb didn't make a sound, but he was listening. She drew a line on the picnic cloth, "Little tricks of the eye, only one of the smallest sub studies in dream technology but one of the most useful and perceivable. There are the Penrose steps and the Penrose shapes. But that's only scratching the surface. There's so many more."

She paused significantly to try to memorize this critical point, watching all of this from a third person point of view in the skies. Those words had emerged from her tongue like vintage wine. The rational part was detached from the passion and she feared that she was going to lose control. "The Devil's Fork," Cobb supplemented, eyeing her curiously.

"Also, remember the drawing, black and white, where when you first look at it," she picked up her pad and sketched from memory, "you tried to decide whether you were looking at an old witch with a large nose or a pretty woman looking away." After taking a moment to admire her handiwork, she passed it over to Cobb, "I found them fascinating when I was young."

"I always saw the young lady." He noted, hauling himself to his elbows, "That says something about me doesn't it?" His lips curved upwards; she laughed along.

He took her notebook and started flipping through it without question and she allowed him to, this was normal. This was what happens when two people are so close, that they don't need words to fill a silence because it felt right, that they are able to communicate with minute looks and gestures. Cobb sat up, still perusing her drawings, lingering on the ones he thought looked interesting and giving out criticisms and compliments. He slowly coaxed her into a discussion about the physics behind modern structures like the CCTV building in Beijing and she allowed herself to be guided off topic. The craving for even a mockery of rapport affects everyone, even this man with the strangest case of DID to date. She felt as if she finally stepped onto solid ground. _This, _she thought as metaphorical weights drop off her shoulders, _is an everyday heaven on Earth. _Her heart ached pleasantly with the simple joy that she could share her life, even if it was a dream life, with another.

Projections were sections of a subconscious so no matter how much she wished differently, there was something inherently missing from them. But this man beside her, no, he was actuality and potentiality; he was another being with inspirations and aptitude, action and movement.

Cobb stopped three quarters through the notepad, "Hey, what's this?" She looked over; it was one of her black and white minute drawings.

She swallowed, "What do you think? Is it two people's faces or one vase?" Has the illusion ever been conceptualized in a dream? In the planning stages, pre-Inception-wise, after her first and second dream walking experience, she had gone to the library to search for any topics about Architects. There was a rather small book (writer was an 'unknown' _Arthur Darling)_, hidden in the back about the split moment revelations between seeing an illusion and trying to reason the image out. A lull fell between the pair. Behind, the children were playing on the swings, their laughter too distant to hear. "If it takes two people to create a metaphysical space, the sleeper of the dream can decide who will be the halves to a whole. It's a walking non-existential safe."

She grew more hesitant as she spoke, until her last sentence ended by a fraying thread. Cobb made a noise from the back of his throat, indiscernible, "Are you thinking of repairing people?" Faking her fascination with the grass and therefore able to be excused for not looking up, she was uncertain whether that was a tease or not and hummed. A lull fell between them.

Phillipa had told her, dangling her feet off a barge that was heading to the lighthouse, that Limbo "is a perception of representations. To me: Daddy is the Lost and Auntie Ari is the Savior. Perception is not having to grow up if one doesn't fancy that they should." _I might understand that now._

Ariadne felt her throat constrict when she gazed up and realized that Cobb's eyes, hypnotic, turbulent sea foam, were only inches away, scrutinizing her like she was the only person in the world worth knowing. The sounds of the beach seemed to amplify the more she maintained contact, the noise of water crashing on rocks and receding to the blue-green beds. "Close your eyes," she whispered. He did. She swallowed, in slight consternation at the immense trust he had in her by not even doubting her request. The simple gesture touched her; it's just that, _I don't think I ever gave him a reason to._

_I might understand that now. _The situation had to make sense to her as a dreamer, so that she can believe in it. It has to be reasonable in the head. Where one helps another, they must both work together to resolve the quandary and in this case, create preternatural objects.

Slowly extending a hand, as if grasping the air between them, she concentrated, shutting her eyes. In that lapse, her grip tightened over something tangible, smooth, as if glazed, and cold. She blinked… and stared at _a vase, I… _Her mind momentarily paused in stupor. _I can't believe that worked. Was the only thing that was required merely an expectation that it would happen? _It was like the Shetland sheep dog that she had entertained on a farm when she was ten who held the expectation that the world righted itself to suit his needs – humans were made to throw balls for him to fetch and hands were specifically shaped to pat his head and rub his tummy. _Not exactly akin to religious dogma but close, very close._

Of course, the contours didn't fit exactly with their features, how could it, but it was respectably close. The vase was modern art, though it held a bewitching curve to its side, the glaze design of light and dark greens resembled grass with a Baroque touch. _Never underestimate the true potentials of the subconscious,_ she thought appreciatively as she turned it in the sun, allowing the vase take on a green supernatural glow as it reflected. _I never thought I had it in me. _"Wow," breathed unintentionally from her chest. Cobb's eyes snapped open; he took a moment to observe the container. She handed the piece over before he could voice his inquiries.

"It takes two people to repair a person," Ariadne remarked, scooting back to her original spot, "It takes two to create something, like this thing right here" _as a study in emerald,_ her mind finished. "But in a dream, it would be the safe that's protecting a secret. What's inside?"

"A photograph," Cobb returned, opening the paper to glance curiously at what's inside. He instantly blanched. His other hand fisted the blanket underneath.

Alarmed, she leaned over what it was and saw… a _…oh. Oh. That makes a lot of sense. _She beheld and comprehended the codes offered by her subconscious. "Cobb, I…" No, she didn't want to go down that road yet. _Slowly, but surely. Careful there. Don't make the transition too abrupt or all of your work will backfire upon you. _She tried again, "Cobb? Do you recognize it?" Does the picture of a spinning pewter top, evenly balanced, revoke any forbidden images? Can it summon up the forgotten and the ghostly projections? It didn't seem like Cobb could not lay his eyes upon the photograph; his facial expressions flitting from one emotion to another so quickly that Ariadne couldn't keep track. _I just want to know if you remember. This could be a huge mistake._ _If that's the case, I'm really sorry. _"Cobb?"

Years of silence shrunk into moments but still kept their overwhelming weight and she could feel every pound and ounce between her shoulder blades. _We could sit forever on this blanket, waiting for change, only to realize that it had swept by the other side, _she thought helplessly. Deafening silence were elastic bands, stretching and stretching and stretching till they held and trembled.

Once again, he shocked her with a coherent answer spoken in a voice that sounded too old and too weary, "Why are you here, Ariadne?" Why are you still here?

"I… came back for you," she unevenly replied, treading in deep water, taking a risk in the rip currents of uncertainty. To be honest, deep inside, as deep as she could shove all of her nightmares into, she didn't think that this would work. Her brain was only operating at minimum power, she was lost as to what was the next proper course of action, _since, for her honesty, she didn't plan this far._

Cobb silently laughed as he buried his head into his hands, "to remind me of what I once knew?"

She could only manage a hoarse softness, elucidating through a fog, "that this world is not real." This shadow of a man, fractured into a million little pieces, the picture he was broke her heart. She wanted so badly to reach over and hold him, to be sure that he _knows, to help, to heal, to fix- _but she can't. He's untouchable in every possible definition. She wasn't the Eve that can eat the Forbidden Apple; she was Ariadne, a princess scorned or the ball of twine, leading Theseus to the Minotaur and back out the Labyrinth. But even the ball of twine has limits. This was her last tactic, the end of the road was a dead end of resignation, "Come back to reality, Cobb."

His body passed through a series of spasms but he was silent as death. She momentarily wondered whether he was hurting or not and noticed that her hand was hovering inches above his shoulder. She bit her bottom lip and debated the pros and cons of a possible action before pulling back. The photograph fluttered from limp fingers and down at her feet. The grass was indistinct as the vase. The clouds had converged above them; any coming second would bring rain.

Ariadne had stayed in Limbo for months and Cobb… years, lifetimes… and her job was still far from over.

_Twenty. 20_

Both palms up is a sign of supplication, "I don't know where he is," Ariadne morosely announced, furrowing her brows, "I ended up at the cliff sides, looking for you but not expecting to see you. But I don't know how I got there. It's been eleven days since he was gone; I had the entire house to myself."

"Unsettling isn't it?"

"Not really, I got used to the solitude long ways back." She sat in the shade of a tree, propping her arms on her knees and breathed in car exhaust. Rush hour bore down heavily with grey smoke and colorful cars, most of the expensive variety, inching along whenever the cross guard, standing under the blinking traffic lights, waved them by. A yellow cab driver was muttering expletives under the cover of the blaring radio, which spouted off BBC news. "They seem more lucid," she noted.

"Yeah, it's because of you." The woman twirled in her yellow sundress and adjusted her broad hat, "Look at me, I actually have a shadow." A faint grey shadow, but that was a start, "that means that whatever you did, it's affecting us all. We can start to feel the connection back to the dreamer."

"So obviously, some of this he's absorbing, but I would like to know what. I don't know," Ariadne sighed irritably, "one moment, you created a vase, the next, you're alone and hanging precariously over jagged rocks and white waters." She glanced over at her companion, "What are you doing?"

"Admiring beauty." The other surveyed herself in a shop window, "You would look nice in a dress," she remarked, examining her side, "why don't you wear one?"

"Never saw the need or want." She was always a pants, boots, scarf, type of woman. "Why do you?"

The projection of Ariadne cocked her head, filtered sunlight laminating her face and smiled serenely, "the freedom, I guess, and how it flies and barely touches my legs. It makes me feel pretty, therefore, I am pretty. Well," she corrected abashedly, "maybe not pretty… more innocent, the definition of purity. Despite all wrongs, you prevail." Instantly, Ariadne recalled the void that sat in the house when she stood at the doorway, so silent that it was loud. The absence of practically everything, but most of all, human contact, she desired it so much that she felt nauseated. The children had left; it was "their time," apologies had not been enough for the devastation that temporarily shattered her. There was nothing to do but cope… somehow… in some way.

It was strange in these circumstances, to be talking to one's mirror other, a reflection of you but inwardly was another part of someone else's subconscious. It might be Schizophrenia or Dissociative Identity Disorder or just general Psychosis; it was one of stranger things that had happened in Limbo. Truth be told, Ariadne had learned to add it to the list of reasons for any possible future Dementia and impassively accepted the doppelganger. The projection had her smile, her walk, her stance, her voice, her eyes, but everything that truly mattered was Cobb's.

"I have to go," Ariadne mumbled.

"Are you sure?" The projection asked, back against the window, staring up at the tops of the skyscrapers.

That question didn't deserve a reply. She silently stood, brushed off imaginary lint from her shoulders, and slowly headed to the house. Ariadne waved back half-heartedly at the figure disappearing in a sea of people, noting that the sea only appeared because she was gone.

The last few days had been stressful- with the rebuilding of the tender connection between Cobb and his projections as the latter group began to awake from their silent or nonsensical stupor. Like all normal projections, they began to look out, instinctively sensing someone foreign among them but it could be hard. There was a crocodile in a sea of alligators, blending in, fitting in, acting normal. The subconscious's eyes flitted from scene to scene, watching for a mistake and waiting because they had the patience of saints. The danger level had risen from green to yellow to orange within a week, she knew that she was treading on sleeping rattlesnakes; at any moment, a mob can hungrily descend upon her and tear…

_Don't expect Cobb to be returning for another month_, she glumly thought, her face fallen not into frown lines but distant thoughtfulness. That- she had guaranteed and had come to expect and expect no less, which was why she stopped at the sidewalk, staring at the front porch, and proceeded to pinch her arm. Hard.

Cobb stood by the door, more of a silhouette than a person, but still plainly recognizable. He motioned for her to come closer till she stood on the bottom step. He then opened the door and invited her in, "We need to talk."


	5. 21 to 26

Author's Note: (Dramatic voice) I have the soundtrack and I love Mombasa it is now my ringtone! (Can you catch the signs of a budding relationship?)

**Beta: swampophelia**

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Twenty-one. 21_

"It's ok," she frustratingly repeated for the fourth time, leaning back and folding her arms, glaring across the table, "I'm fine." She thought that Cobb had always been overprotective when he didn't know Ariadne as a dreamer, but the Cobb who was aware of his settings: unbearable on a whole other level. The man had a grip over her hand, really hot and light enough that she could pull away if she wanted to, but she found it too troublesome to.

Cobb exhaled, "You've been here for a long time, this exposure affects everything, and no one is an exception. It affected you, I can see it. I don't know how much, but it's evident. You're not fine." So began another battle of wills that lasted for a few minutes. "Ariadne, no matter how much you think otherwise, you're scarred."

Finally, Ariadne relented. "Fine, I need help." She held up a hand, "but not now! We have to get you out of here first. We can deal with other side-effects once we return to reality."

Hopefully when they emerged from a dream, her issues will be half-remembered and totally forgotten. Somehow, her thoughts must have broadcasted through her facial expressions because the man gave her a look that dared her to try to let the subject go. She looked down at her hands which were held in his; he did too and let go. Immediately, her left hand dove into her pocket to check her totem; inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her bishop was as much as a totem for a dream-walker as a stuffed animal for a small child.

She judged him critically, watching as his eyebrows furrowed as he reabsorbed her explanation, which had spanned a couple hours long because of how delicately she was trying to describe the settings since she was essentially examining his psyche. He had often asked her to repeat and elaborate: would the projections be what he had wished had happened instead of his past? Why were the main projections so friendly with her and so self-aware? There were no answers. Cobb had also noticed holes in her history, specifically, the unfortunate meetings with his deceased wife.

"But," Ariadne had asked, puzzled, halfway through her story, "Shouldn't you know what you're projections experienced as they occur?"

Cobb had shrugged, the low level light above cut sharp shadows on his body, "The moment I saw the photo of my totem, some flashes did run through my head, I had received some knowledge but that information is tucked in the back. It'll be hard to summon those memories to the forefront of my mind. So while you're explanation would be equivalent to deja-vu, I'd rather you continue." He had placed his elbows on the table and adopted a thinking posture and made a 'go on' motion with his hand.

_I wonder if Mal invented the concept of the totem?_

"Ariadne?" Thrown out of her reverie, she jolted in her seat. He looked on, amused, "Are you there? I'll repeat- tomorrow, would you like to join me to look for the projection of you?"

This was her first experience in a tête-a-tête that felt overwhelmingly too personal; her guardians never mentioned this in etiquette classes. She felt that even with that 'faux-pas' that she was doing well thinking on her feet… chair… One can't blame her. Half-heartedly glaring indignantly across the table, she impatiently tapped on the wood, "shouldn't you just… you know…" she waved her hand around.

His amusement doubled and it showed in his eyes, "off myself?" He slowly shook his head, "it's not that simple. The totem is like a portal away from Limbo, any other way and… Well, those who emerged from Limbo never did not talk about retrieving their totem. The only one who didn't take her totem from Limbo was…" His smile turned pained.

_Mal. _The air turned heavy, the lights above them flickered.

After awkwardly clearing his throat, he continued, "So my projection of Ariadne, where would she be?"

"You won't be able to find her," a third voice said from the doorway, elderly and masculine and horribly familiar. Ariadne spun around on her seat, nearly falling over in the process. Cobb raised an eyebrow and addressed coolly.

"Miles." Professor Miles tipped his hat before hanging it on the stand.

"You gave me the spare key to babysit the children when they were young," the older man answered the unasked question, smiling benignly. The projection walked into the room and pulled up a chair; Ariadne scooted over to make some room while Cobb curtly nodded. "…Oh, don't look at me like that, a part of you told you that I was going to come, Dom, don't look too surprised. So, where was I? Ah yes, Ariadne, your projection. You won't be able to find her."

"But why?" The real Ariadne protested, "She makes regular appearances."

"Not anymore," Miles corrected her, "Since Dom here came to the realization that he was dreaming, I have been unable to discern her location. It's just like she had disappeared off the radar. It means that-" Cobb testily interrupted him.

"It means that I'm not ready to leave yet." Cobb turned to the projection of his father-in-law and demanded, "Why are you helping us? As far as you know, my subconscious is usually more hostile to foreigners than most other sleepers." Ariadne tensed and tried to shrink into a small ball away from both men, feeling the tension crack between them.

"You should know the answer to that," the other mildly replied, "I am you, after all." Miles then patted Ariadne's shoulder reassuringly, "Anyways, to what Dom mentioned- it's due to many unknown elements, some that we're not aware of, but mostly, it's that he does not want to leave."

"His children…" Ariadne started but got cut off.

"His children are not enough," Miles gravely said. It was the wrong thing to imply.

Cobb slammed his fists on the table, the 'bang' echoing in his empty living room, and stood in righteous fury, "Phillipa and James are the reason why I did all I could to return to them. I have nothing else but my children. You dare call me an incompetent father?"

After a moment of silence, where the three were as still as marble statues, the professor whispered, "Perhaps I misspoke. You are an admirable parental figure but because of your prolonged stay in Limbo, your fatherly instincts have confused the projections for reality and feel itself satisfied. You know you must return, you feel the desperate need, but the subconscious and the conscious are two entirely different things. I know that because you know that." Scowling, Cobb sat back down, his eyes still narrowed distrustfully. This only seemed to strengthen the elder whose voice sharpened with conviction, "but there is nothing for you to return to reality other than your children, you have no hope, no trust in anyone in reality, you must find a reason." Miles paused and aged a decade in his silence; he wearily sighed, "That's all I have to say for now. I'll take my leave, seeing as I'm not welcome here."

Without moving from her seat, she watched as the elder slowly stood and straightened his coat. She watched as Miles balanced himself on his cane and reached for his hat before departing the room. The door closed. At once, Cobb's form sagged like a puppet that had cut its own strings, hollow. Ariadne watched as he rested his head on his arms, face down, and waited patiently for some minutes, counting to a hundred, before cautiously pushing her chair back. The sound of chair against tile didn't even cause him to flinch. Her own body moved habitually by years of driven instinct whenever she tried to alleviate a tense situation such as this.

She began to make tea, robotically taking out the teapot, pouring in water, and placing it on the stove. Standing back against the counter, there was a clear view to the boneless man. Her foot began tapping an upbeat rhythm against the floor. _Miles said that Cobb needed a reason, a reason like a drive, a goal, or a small ambition. It's as if one were asked why did they decide to rise in the morning every day to work, why a person would keep on living. _Cobb is already an old man, having lived fifty years in dreams with Mal and another untold amount of time after the inception, what else is there to look forward to? The water began boiling; Ariadne dropped a teabag into the pot and took out two cups.

As she poured, she spoke in a tone that sounded like she was having a conversation about the weather of a content day, "Sometimes, the reason could be indescribable. I think that you can return if you try hard enough." She peeked up and was disappointed, she looked back down and concentrated on her task, "I know the professor is, I think, your mentor, but he might not always be right." After passing a hand over the cups to feel the steam, she took the brews to the table and handed one over to him, "There's always hope, always." She repeated, as if she was trying to convince herself. "Because."

That's what she had told the projection of herself, don't give up. Never give up. Cobb lifted his head inches above the surface and reached for the cup, the tea was jasmine. Ariadne smiled as he drank.

"We'll keep looking for her." She firmly declared, sliding back into her own chair, taking a sip, and eying the other anxiously, "even if you give up, I won't give up for you. There must be a clue of her whereabouts, a hint. And though it'll be hard to find, it's out there somewhere. Of course," she hastily added, "I would like your help, from time to time, since it's mainly your Limbo, even if it's supposed to be shared. You have access to some places that I can't get into, like subway stations and certain shops and buildings."

The man's coloring returned to his pale cheeks as his previous anguished expression was replaced by pensiveness. She counted to a hundred and decided that her good deed for the night was finished and patiently waited for him to finish his drink so that she can clean up. A grin came unbidden to lift the corners of her mouth as the sensation of Zen washed over her.

"Ariadne?" Cobb murmured, lifting his gaze.

"Hmm?"

"Am I? My kids…" Even with the limited words, she understood him clearly. Imagine, a man like Cobb, still radiating this version of low self-confidence.

"You're a wonderful father. I've seen you;" she said sincerely, "The world needs more fathers like you." _Years ago, I would've killed to have a dad with a fraction of your devotion._

The man laughed, "It's more the other side of the spectrum that I worry about. It's too easy to spoil them." He stood up and stretched, all of his troubles washed off his back as he prepared to retire for the night. "We'll see what lies tomorrow." She agreed as she placed the cups in the sink, turned around and realized that he was waiting for her to follow.

"Cobb?" The man acknowledged her; she felt awkward under his eyes, her fingers rolled over her golden bishop. "At the moment when we do find your spinning top and when we're prepared to… die." The countertop between them provided a barrier between her growing shame and his curiosity, he had moved closer, back to her. "I know I never voiced this before during Saito's job since there wasn't any time and I didn't want to burden you," she peered up; Cobb nodded and that gave her enough courage to finish in a graceless hurry, "If you can _find a way without using a gun_…."

Heat rose to her cheeks despite her best attempts to prevent her mortification. Her inner voice berated her for her paranoid mind and her post traumatic stress disorder. _Real adults never put their own comforts in front of others, especially not in a situation like this!_ Ariadne mentally, repeatedly slapped herself up her head as she felt warmth creep up her neck. Cobb looked away at the fireplace in the corner with a soft smile, "I think we can easily figure out something." _Wouldn't want to trouble you, forget what I said, we need to do this without distractions._ Reading her thoughts, he dropped his hands to his sides and turned to the door, "Don't worry about it. Don't forget what we talked about, this is also about you too." He tilted his neck to glance back, "Turn out the lights on your way out, ok?"

She nodded dumbly, closed her eyes, and rubbed her hands together. Even after holding a hot teacup, her hands were still ice.

_Twenty-two. 22_

Miles' words stood true, the projection of Ariadne was gone, melted in the sands of the beach, wafted into the air, vanished. The disappearance of the Ariadne-projection was a big obstacle that Ariadne didn't anticipate; without the projection, there was no sign of Cobb's totem. She had nearly torn a chunk of her hair out in frustration and scared the water fowl off the beach. Cobb had calmly mentioned that there is still time to find the projection since, after all, Limbo offers all time at one's fingertips. Cobb was missing the point; the point was to get out of Limbo before Ariadne loses her sanity, but she relented because there was no other solution.

"Why don't you come with me tomorrow?" Cobb had asked the other night, leaning casually against the doorframe. "I have something I want to show you."

Ariadne had looked up from her pile of sketches and shavings, one hand holding a pencil and the other holding a pencil sharpener and mentally debated. "Sure."

That's where she finds herself today.

"It's a future I envisioned for subconscious manipulators." Ariadne closed her eyes and allowed Cobb's voice to wash over her, at the same time marveling the fact that she could logistically feel the voice like ocean waves rippling in the air. Cobb's hand tugged her own, she quickened her pace, "Now that I think about it, these are my theories of Limbo, it hasn't happened in Limbo yet, but it will. There's a hope for dreaming, I'm sure, no one can ignore its potential it's just…" Cobb trailed off; Ariadne opened her eyes and saw that they were walking counter to the majority of the other people on the streets. The projections brushed against her but didn't aggressively bump shoulders, as if they were giving her a warning. "We're here." Before them stood the same hospital that Ariadne had come from at the start of her journey.

"You work here?" The lighting closely resembled natural sunlight. The walls had a repeating pattern of original artworks by Surrealists and sketches of the brain.

"Yes," Cobb simply replied and ushered her inside. They walked up a flight of stairs and down two halls till they entered a changing room where Cobb handed her a light blue lab coat that fitted her perfectly. They walked into the 'K-wing' of the hospital: Psychological and Subconscious studies. Cobb entered his office (Dominic Cobb- Professor and Director), shuffled a few papers around and picked up a folder as Ariadne watched him curiously. His demeanor had gradually changed as they moved about, turning more professional with each step till he was a different man.

"On a usual day, we get about six requests, fourteen follow ups and around four addictions."

_What?_ "Wha-?"

"I'll explain," he assured her and they entered a combined waiting room and consulting area where little circles of families were sitting, each family usually huddled around one member.

From behind the counter, a man with messy black hair and glasses walked over with a clipboard, "More than usual today Sir, most requests by companies." The other nodded silently and took the clipboard and forms and walked to an adjacent door where a family and a consultant were sitting on opposite sides of the desk, neither looked up when Cobb and Ariadne took their spots in the shadows by the window.

"Sometimes requests come from companies who want faster results from scientists. Other times, a scientist or any person that needs time can have a patron, either a wealthy individual or perhaps the academe, to back them up." Cobb whispered from the corner of his mouth. "We get mostly the scholarly people who are convinced that organizing their multiple trains of thoughts can make them reach a conclusion faster. Studies have proved this is true by up to fifty fold. To many people, faster progress means faster growth, hence, the funds from Fortune 500 companies. Other times, we get famous musicians and obscure philosophers who want their ideal 'escape' to help them create. The last group, such as people here, those who can afford IT, can rent out the PASIV for recreational use, but these people are monitored more strictly. Sometimes, the user is talented enough to use the device without in-depth monitoring."

The family at the table paid upfront in cash and in exchange got a familiar looking silver metal briefcase and an instruction manual. "Alone?" Ariadne asked. The entire process felt dirty to her, as if one was looking at a drug deal off the corners of a sketchy street. She stole a glance at Cobb, who she saw was gauging her reaction. His face was lined with grim creases; he had aged in the hospital. _He's losing himself in this job, _she thought,_ but only in the hospital._

"It's not the best solution, there are many moral issues still contested between officials and higher-ups as to whether we should allow this or not. There's a safer version of the PASIV device. The user will be monitored by a trusted family member in real life. Other times, the user will also need to 'rent' out a Dreamer to build the world for him or her." The family mentioned was ushered out and another group of people came in to take their seats before the consultant. Cobb ran a hand through his grey hair.

"How often does that happen?" Ariadne asked.

"For the most part," the man replied. "Independent users are one in a blue moon and in this family, they probably couldn't afford a Dreamer, high sales tax and all that rot. The user's dreams will not be as vivid, real, believable or unbelievable as a Dreamer's," he turned toward her; instantly, his appearance grew younger and he looked at her as if he was remembering something, "You and I are in that fraction of the population. We're not sure how it's dictated that one person is talented to be a Dreamer but Miles had mentioned a huge event in one's past can unlock the brain to its more creative juices." His eyes dug deep into her as if to search something, his finger brushed up against her cheek as he spoke softly, "I believe that your past is quite traumatic Ariadne…"

She stepped back maybe just half of a foot, but it was noticeable; Cobb allowed his hand to fall. (A bird that was flying past the window suddenly had feathers from its wings torn from its body. The bird fell, there was no blood. She was the only one who saw the moment.)

The rest of the consultations passed in a weighted silence, the pair moved into a chamber, wide with metal arches as ceilings and windows between each arch, giving the area semi-natural lighting. Here, each user and Dreamer pair was attached to the PASIV that was hooked onto a screen that showed a fuzzy picture of shapes and voices. There were perhaps fourteen groups in all with thin curtains as barriers. A group of four psychologists were examining the screen and discussing quietly under their breaths. The lighting shining up from the floor made them look like they had jaundice. "Follow-ups," Cobb waved a hand at the scene, "Where we attempt to cure many psychological illnesses with varying degrees of success, most of it is still research. Again, the barrier to further discovery is hampered by the lack of privacy and other moral issues. Hippocratic oath still stands."

"Should I be watching?" One patient's particular screen was a myriad of reds and purples and morphing and swirling around each other.

"It's ok." His hand squeezed hers in reassurance. On the other side of the chamber, a patient and Dreamer pair woke up. The patient attempted to stand but stumbled back into her cot, "Other times, we test a previous user's mental capabilities to see whether they are deemed stable before and after PASIV use. I have seen people wake up crying and hugging the closest people by them." Cobb smiled wistfully, "Tortured as they go under, they wake up free like birds, forever cured." Ariadne looked at Cobb's clipboard and tried to envision herself as one of the Dreamers. _These are more technicalities. One can manipulate thoughts, change personalities, and make a schizophrenic patient unable to hear the voices that pain them. How much trust one must place in a Dreamer to allow them that much power? One can even unlock…_

Cobb moved briskly to the next door with Ariadne at his heels, nodding to the other workers who greeting him with the words, "good day, sir." The workers looked at Ariadne curiously but didn't talk to her. They used the elevator to transport them to the basement where Cobb opened the door to something that looked like an elongated prison. The walls and floors were tile and an off beige color, the fluorescent light gave a greenish-blue tint to the area. There were many people, too many to count, lying in cots attached to one huge PASIV device that hung from the ceiling, utterly gone from the world.

"Addiction," Cobb murmured reluctantly, shifting his body to allow her a good view. "Also the Lost."

The place was eerily silent save for the shallow breathing and the symmetric heartbeats of all the patients in the room. She walked up to a patient and stood there, unsure whether she should touch him or not. "You can't wake them up," Cobb said at the other side of the room behind some desks, opening and closing drawers, "Neither do they want to be woken. We keep them here till we're ready to attempt to convince them in the Follow-Up chamber once again to return to reality. Though that rarely happens as once one is lost, one stays lost…"

Ariadne didn't manage to catch the double meaning as she walked through the rows and rows of patients, all sleeping in the military position on their backs with their arms at their sides. She took notice of how the size of her shadow fluctuated as she walked from one light to another. Her mind systematically categorized all that she had learned today: _this is Cobb's vision of a future, his ideal future, or a future that he believes will never happen in reality. But even that sort of future is imperfect…_

"I used to work here. Drab, long hours, horrible morale, I used to hate coming here, but it was a duty I had because there was no one else. Like Charon from Greek mythology who had to ferry the dead. But the moment you told me that I was dreaming, I was promptly promoted to supervisor and, not much later, director." Ariadne turned around; he was sitting behind the desk with his arms casually supporting his head, clearly in his element in the gloomy atmosphere. "This is mine; but at that moment, it truly became something that I could control." Cobb's stare met her own, "Do you think it means something?"

She nervously adjusted her lab coat and bit her bottom lip. Does tearing the feathers off a bird mean something even though the song only means to pluck the feathers off a wing? Did the fact that the projection of Ariadne, the holder of Cobb's lost totem, disappeared mean anything? Or how Ariadne found a photograph of the totem? Does anything at all? She shrugged, "This entire world breathes extended metaphors, you tell me."

_Twenty-three. 23_

"Eames was the first of his kind: brilliant partner; it was an honor to meet him. Miles was the one to introduce to me that young and upcoming graduate student at the time with… radical notions. He had a thesis written for a research paper called, 'Unconscious sharing: a single projection disguise.'" Cobb played with the straw of his drinks as he idly watched the singer on the platform switch between erotic positions on the piano. Ariadne rolled her eyes and tried not to laugh too loud, not really understanding why she found this humorous. _It's like Cobb's emulating Eames as he's talking about Eames._ "He came from old money who bought PASIV devices for him to take apart in the times when PASIV devices amounted to the cost of an island."

The performer sang in French about love and loss; the pianist was determined not to look up between her legs. "And Eames ended up as a criminal?" Ariadne asked incredulously from her shrimp fettuccini, "with all the world before him offered on a silver platter, handfed by a silver spoon? God, if I were him I would… I would…" _Go off onto a deserted island and forget about the world._

"Yes, it created quite the scandal. He had left after publishing two other influential papers before running off to Mombasa with a sizable chunk of the family fortune, and had been offering his services to both obscure and famous companies alike. He was the first Forger and since the start of his career, he had taken on two apprentices, neither of whom had mastered the art as finely as he has." The man leaned on the railings to see the lower levels of the restaurant. Behind him, the performer had begun to walk from one side of the stage to another, acting as if there was an invisible wall between her and her audience, pounding at the air to be let out.

_C'est lui pour moi. Moi pour lui. __Dans la vie…_

"Too often, Arthur got annoyed with Eames' antics and the two of them butted heads like no one else's business. It was amusing to watch them squabble like children and call each other names; it ended the monotony and the reminders of the risks of our line of work." Cobb flicked his wrist, holding his fork as a high-end person would hold a French cigarette holder. In the background, the pianist threw himself onto the piano, belting out chord after chord. "Under no circumstances should one call Eames by his given name, consequences surely follow." Cobb tapped the fork thoughtfully against his mouth, "Now that I think about it, it's strange that he never changed his name, he had the resources."

"You say that because you want me to ask what Eames' first name is." Ariadne accused.

"Me?" Cobb's lips quirked, his eyes glittering in the dark, "I would never, though it would be fun to hang the knowledge that you know over him. But I would never do that to a trusted friend."

"Please?" She pouted and made her eyes as big as possible, framing her face with her hands. Cobb leaned back and laughed.

"It made Arthur's day when he found out, said that it was the highlight of his Point-Man career." Ariadne groaned and mock-shook Cobb's shoulders, "I'll give you hint." He quickly said as he signaled the waiter for a check, "It has to do with Shakespeare."

"Hamlet Eames?" Ariadne attempted.

"Cassius Eames?" Cobb playfully countered.

"Prospero Eames?" Ariadne shot back.

"Macbeth Eames?" Cobb replied.

"Othello Eames?" Ariadne snorted unladylike into her drink.

"King Lear Eames?" Cobb lowered his head as his frame started shaking.

"…King Lear… Ea-" She couldn't finish before going into stitches.

When the waiter came back, he found that couple was in hysterics, unable to stop laughing.

_Twenty-four. 24_

"Omlette, gentile omlette, omlette, je te mangerais," Ariadne clapped and sang along with James as Philippa laid on her stomach, coloring messily into a book that was not meant to be colored in and humming along. Ariadne had been entertaining the two kids for the entire afternoon as their father sat at the dining table, surrounding himself in a sea of papers and consulting texts. She had intended to take a break from the grueling process of studying Cobb's college texts by using the kids as a distraction but somehow, next thing she knew, it was nine at night. _Space time continuum bends around them,_ she mused as James stopped singing to yawn hugely behind his hand.

As much as James tried to hide it, Cobb's fatherly instincts picked up the movement- Cobb looked up from his work, "Alright, time for bed you two."

"What!" Philippa yelped from her vantage point, shooting an accusing look at her brother who yawned again, "but I'm not tired, Daddy!" As if anticipating the rebuttal, a yawn, so huge that it couldn't be stopped, escaped from her mouth. Philippa pouted and James shot his sister a victorious look.

Cobb raised an eyebrow; both children sighed in defeat and groaned as they pulled their bodies up to their feet. James tugged demandingly at Ariadne's shirt, "Tuck me in Auntie Ari."

"And me! And me!" The other chimed in, sitting back and waving her hands in the air.

Heaving Philippa up and taking James by the hand, Ariadne led them to the doorway, "That I will do…" she trailed off as she glanced back; Cobb encouragingly shooed her away, "to the best of my abilities."

"Yeah!" The duo cheered as they went down to the hall leading to the bedrooms. James was the first to be lifted into his bed and kissed goodnight. Ariadne slowly closed the door to the room of the little boy who was already beginning to doze off and guided Philippa by the hand to her room.

"How long have you been here Auntie Ari?" Philippa asked curiously and hush-hush, as if asking for gossip, "I lost count."

_If she lost count, then Cobb probably forgot too._ The elder stared into the distance and tried to count the days in her mind- she couldn't, she could only recall happy memories, most of which had happened after Cobb made the realization that he was dwelling in Limbo. "I lost count too," she whispered, opening the door that had a signed saying, 'Phillippa's room. No Boys Allowed.' Months… Maybe a year, or two, if time had been that fluid. Everyday had been studying on dream theory, sketching out plans, watching the construction of the Penrose Triangle, working with Cobb in his department of the hospital, playing with the kids, exploring, searching for the totem- to no avail.

"It's been so long since I remember…ing… I want to help you, you know." Philippa said seriously before yawning again, "Just dunno what to do."

The totem is the only hope that Cobb has, without it, Cobb relapses. Sometimes, Cobb does relapse, but the next day, he's back to his original level of awareness. Ariadne couldn't find a pattern to this forward-backward motion of his brain and tried not to dwell on it too long, only thankful that Cobb never stays in the mindset that Limbo is his new reality.

She kissed Philippa on the forehead, "sweet dreams," she softly murmured.

"Good night, Mommy," drifted back sleepily. Ariadne chalked it up to the fact that Philippa was too tired to be aware of her words. She shut the door and clamped down on her doubts.

She tiptoed her way back to the dining room and took her place with her forgotten college texts but instead of studying them, she gave then a thoughtful once-over before pushing them away from her with extreme distaste. Cobb quirked an eyebrow, "Too painful to continue?" he inquired.

"Pretty much," she sighed; it was a happy sigh of contentment. She didn't know how to convey her feelings into simple words. There was this extreme closeness of the family dynamic that she knew that had to have happened in real life; Cobb couldn't have created it from scratch. The children contributed to the atmosphere, one that she hadn't felt in a very, very, very long time. It brought a warm, fuzzy sensation into her chest and stomach, one that made her humming happily to herself and smiling like a complete loon. She allowed her head to rest in her arms and watched Cobb pore over the books and papers. She noticed the lines in his face, his concentrated expression of one engrossed in his work, his hands, large callous and sturdy, his eyes, as unique as any that she had ever seen. She stared unabashedly; the man didn't seem to mind at all... Her eyelids were beginning to feel pretty heavy…

…

A warm hand rested on her back, "Hey," a low voice said into her ear. She looked up, hair curtaining her face. Cobb began rubbing circles into her back, "You're getting used to the sensations of Limbo, your mind demands a normal sleeping schedule."

"Really?" She asked groggily. "Why? It was so nice before,"

"Before insomnia? I wouldn't know about that," the man humored her. "Here."

He threw something over her- a thick warm blanket with the designs of a patchwork quilt, "IT's warm." She murmured happily.

"Glad you like it," Ariadne allowed his voice, a low rumble, like a distant earthquake, to wash over her. "Off to bed, you."

She slowly stumbled to her feet, casting a mournful look at the textbooks behind her before slowly making her way through the house. She clumsily groped for the light switch but the man flicked it on before she could, "I could've found that." Her cheeks began to heat up when he shot her a dubious look.

Her door was a familiar sight, as was her room, which she had begun decorating to make it more of her own. Blueprints of some of the greatest architectural works in the world were the highlights of her poster collages on the walls opposite of the windows. On the dresser were three photos: one of Ariadne in a sundress grinning at the beach with Cobb a few steps behind her also smiling, another of Ariadne and Cobb's little devils, all dripping with salt water, and the final of Cobb and his kids lying lazily on the grass of the front lawn. Ariadne looked into her room and turned around to face Cobb, slightly surprised by the fact that the man had walked her to the bedroom. She felt miniscule against him, unimportant relative to the space that he seemed to take up by his mere presence. She coughed, "I want to thank you."

With the light behind him, she couldn't tell his expression but his hand that was resting on her shoulder had fallen off, "Good night, Ariadne." As he turned around, she reached out to grab his sleeve.

Though she paused with her hand positioned in an outstretched manner, he seemed to sense her action and turned around. Only his silhouette was visible. She squirmed under his gaze that she could feel heating along her skin, "No, not just today." She forced out, wringing her hands nervously, "I mean, 'thank you.' For everything, you know, for sharing with me all of-" _For sharing all of this, all of you._

His hand reached out, she froze in her stance, unsure of his intentions…. He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, "I understand. Good night, Ariadne."

_Twenty-five. 25_

_The man is a puzzle, his mind is a puzzle, how can one fathom him, how can one solve him? _Ariadne thought, staring at the heels of the person in question. _How in the world did I solve him?_

It was another day at the job; Ariadne had established herself as Cobb's personal assistant, doing rounds about the area, never leaving his side. Some of the projections had even began to take a shine to her.

"What's next?" Cobb asked as he strolled down the hallway, back ramrod straight and arms at his side. It took a lot to try to keep up with him but at least she had memorized the contents clenched in her hand.

"Patient Annabelle L. Waters: a combination of low self-confidence and bad school setting had inadvertently forced out the Anti-William's syndrome in her. History shows that her mother's side of the family was prone to such attacks. She had been unresponsive since last Sunday that would be… er… six days ago." She doggedly matched his footsteps.

"Another problem with dreaming is the knowledge. Before people knew about PASIV and extraction and dream-building, there was no medical problem called "Reality Doubting" where the patient consciously… semi-consciously… subconsciously refuses to wake. After it became the center of media attention, people thought, 'I can create my own world, why don't I?' First it was individual active dreaming, and then it was active shared dreaming. Then, virtual reality and video game stocks plummeted." He looked back and seemed satisfied at her interest. "Companies like Square Enix and the makers of Halo didn't die… but, just a lesser force in everyday living."

They walked over a metal portion of the ground, their heels clanged and vibrated. "And with that came this problem?" She made a notation in the notepad and a mental reminder to look up the 'Anti-William' syndrome: _probably won't exist, must be a subgroup under the big umbrella of Reality Doubting._

"Precisely," Cobb knocked and opened a door marked 'III-318W.' Ariande peeked over his shoulder- in what looks to be an average looking patient room was a family of three: a father, a brother, and the one whom she assumed to be Annabelle L. Waters. "Mr. Waters, I'm Dr. Cobb and this is my lovely assistant, Miss Bishop. It's a pleasure to meet you." Cobb kept his posture as loose as possible while still maintaining his professional air, holding out a hand to shake. Ariadne smiled politely.

Mr. Waters clothes were rumpled against his frame, making him look much smaller thaN he was. There were wearied lines around his face and it took him a few seconds to respond before warily returning Cobb's offer, "Thank you Doctor."

He nodded curtly to Ariadne. "Do you bring news? I was told that the dream-walkers will enter her subconscious tomorrow at noon but they haven't told me about the chances of success." He glanced back anxiously at the sleeping figure on the hospital bed and the monitors that beeped every second or so. "I won't be here tomorrow to be there with her if she wakes up. My son, Matthew, will." Mr. Waters waved a hand at his son, who was perhaps Arthur's age, who flickered his eyes disinteresting at the guests before turning his attentions back to his sister.

Cobb smiled, wide and close-lipped, "Well Mr. Waters, her chance of success will depend on what happens today. I need to know everything about her, her life, her likes, dislikes, people she surrounds herself with, secrets, routines, anything that makes her tick. The more you tell us, the more the dream-walkers will have to use to convince her to come back home."

_He's in his Extractor-mode right now;_ Ariadne tapped her pen against her lip, watching thoughtfully. _Even though his position means that he doesn't have to work with patients, he still does. I guess one mustn't become rusty in one's craft._ The air conditioning in the room automatically turned on, drowning the room in a low hum.

Mr. Waters wringed his hands, "I was warned that this was going to happen," he sighed, "is there no other way?"

"Mr. Waters, you know as much as I do that this is the only path." Cobb gently consoled, "Now I want you to…"

_Cobb once told me that dream-walkers were mostly psychology majors or minors with a clear understanding of how people work. Walkers are also sociology, anthropology, philosophy, theater, music, and art majors. There are the architects who build the dreams and the occasional scientist who offers an abstract approach from a different standpoint, perspective wise. But mainly, they are psychology majors, the personality specialists and the gifted ones who can pinpoint the small details, small twitches and mannerisms, like Eames. _Ariadne watched as the father relented and began a narrative, adding small details here and there. Cobb nodded encouragingly. She noticed that in his hand was a recorder.

"And I… I… She never said anything to me, how was a father supposed to know? Her mother is in the same state right now, after the doctors in Mombasa declared her hopeless in their five year time-frame, trying every solution or theory desperately to fix her. Now they'll only work on her every time a new theory of practice gets published, I understand and I understand. But, her body… Her mind…"_ The gene is theorized to be similar to the one that used to make Native Americans more susceptible to alcohol. Maybe it was some little survival trait to learn how to cope. Some people have it expressed more strongly than others. _Ariadne tried to recall from a medical text she had perused two days back. _You can't tell who has the trait, only that it's hereditary. _

She kept her eye on Matthew Waters and tried to imagine what he was thinking. _Nothing optimistic, I'm sure. I should start brushing up on my psyche knowledge…_

"Matthew, is there anything you would like to add?" Mr. Waters asked, "You could offer a different perspective, I know that you were close to her, you should talk, for your sister." Cobb turned his attention from father to son, the latter who slowly stood up.

"There's nothing you can do," he spoke, voice bland yet rebellious.

"Matthew!" Mr. Waters shouted, scandalized.

"You're right, dad. I know her better than you so I know that she hates her life. And frankly, if I was in her shoes and suffering from depression, I would do the same as she did. Her life sucked." The son wiped sandy hair away from his eyes and stared levelly at his father, "Don't look at me like that. You heard her therapist; we had her on suicide watch for the longest time. This was only an alternative."

"Don't you want to help your sister?" Cobb inquired with palms up in askance.

"Anna doesn't need my help," Matthew shot an unreadable glance at the patient, "She's in her own little world, surrounded in probably happiness and more happiness. She ran away from this big bad world. I say just forget it, she wouldn't want to live, she's satisfied where she is, why would she want to leave? Even if we make amends, her life won't be the same compared to her dreams." Mr. Waters made a strangled noise of a dying dog. Matthew's expression rapidly interchanged between love and disgust. "She used to tell me her wondrous and grand dreams before all of this and she wanted to keep sleeping and dreaming. Why would you rip that from her?" He looked at Cobb, "It would only hurt her. I would never hurt my sister."

"It's not moral." Cobb swiftly countered. Mr. Waters began moaning and squeezing his daughter's hand- no response.

"Free will, one's own choice to stay- is it moral?" Matthew replied bitterly, stuffing his hands into his pockets like a sullen teenager and staring at the Salvador Dali look-a-like on the wall. "Can you define morality for me? I'm only trying to do what I think is right, I think I'm moral. Are you?"

_Twenty-six. 26_

There is this vintage diner where the newspapers have every word scratched out but 'forget', there are family-friendly posters of Clara Bow and Mary Pickford, Edith Piaf singing over the speakers, and the an obvious touch of Art Deco on all the furnishings and decorations. It was also the place where an enigmatic poltergeist gave her toffee. The chocolate and bakery store had a respectable amount of customers socializing in their respective groups. They've stayed here for over two hours making small talk that surprisingly wasn't awkward. The waiters had long given up trying to subtly convince them to leave.

Ariadne poured some milk into her coffee, "-Can or cannot? He is quite a character."

"Arthur Darling," Cobb reminisced over a cup of hot coffee and two pieces of toffee, "a likeable fellow once you get to know him. Strict but fair with his personal little brand of humor that is similar to grapefruit without brown sugar. He's reliable; I had originally recruited him right after he graduated from high school and had been training him since. His family and mine were friends; I saw his innate talent through multiple house-warming and holiday parties."

_That explains Eames pet name for him. _Ariadne mused, the thought having just occurred to her; blowing softly over her cup and watching the brown liquid make ripples. She wondered why Cobb was so willing to talk to her about his life and his acquaintances and could think of no clear-cut answer except that maybe he just needed to talk and interact with someone who's not his own projection. _But why such personal info, granted it's indirectly connected to him. Does he really want me to know so much? _"I got that impression from him. His brilliance allowed him to create the idea of a Paradox."

Cobb pointed at an imaginary idea in the air, eyes glazed into the past, "that was what made my team so popular. We kept our techniques and secrets close to ourselves. Arthur still have multiple tricks up his sleeves regarding them, no matter how many books he published or how many other Extraction teams tried to invade his mind or have invaded his mind. No one can do it as efficiently or calculatingly as him. He created whole worlds out of those staircases."

_I'm socializing with him. _The thought hit her like a five ton brick. _I'm having fun with him, pure fun. How come I only just noticed?_ A goofy smile lit up across her face, so strong that she couldn't return back to her amiable expression. Cobb noticed the change almost immediately.

"Is there something wrong?" He ventured worriedly, "I mean, if you're bored here and want to go somewhere else. I told you that you didn't have to worry about money and yet you only bought a drink and no dinner-" Ariadne couldn't tell why he was talking this way, but thought that it was quite cute.

"No, no," She laughed, "It's nothing, it's just…" this_ warmness, with Cobb and his children, at that night, that was family dynamics, but I also forgot- this is belonging; this utter comfortableness, this feeling that one doesn't want to move at all. _She squirmed comfortably in her plush seat, sipped some coffee and sighed happily, flashing him a big grin across the table.

Cobb eyed her strangely for a second before cracking his own smile where he crinkled the edges of his eyes.


	6. 27 to 34

Author's Note: I love sandcastles. The chapter where everything nearly coalesce together!

**Beta: swampophelia**

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Twenty-seven. 27_

"You love the past too much."

Cobb looked up from his binder filled with paperwork from the hospital, his left eyebrow lifted so high that she feared it would disappear into his hairline. "Excuse me?"

She sat cross legged on the park bench and looked steely into his eye, "one of the elements that's preventing us from leaving Limbo is the fact that you're still attached to the past."

"I see." He placed his pen down onto the table, "Do you want me to tell you every little dirty secret of mine?" She stayed silent, having already anticipated his hostility at her annoying probes. "You know everything, why are you still sticking your foot into my business?"

"You don't have to tell me anything," She retorted, self-consciously straightening her back, "You just need to admit it and make amends."

He snorted, "Do you think that it's black and white?" A van with a blaring siren drove by. He shut his binder with more force than necessary. "I'm not just a patient and you aren't just a therapist," he hissed as he leaned closer. "The roles can be reversed. Remember what I told you?" Leaning in till he was a mere foot away. "I believe that you have a traumatic past."

Ariadne flinched back; Cobb retreated with a satisfied look on his face, "Limbo is a two-way street- either one of us could be influencing the mechanics of this realm."

It seems that weeks of pushing and prodding Cobb's metaphorical buttons to get him to commit some act of catharsis didn't go as planned but had instead built up a contained frustration that ultimately backfired on her. Just as well, he might've been planning this confrontation all along- the manipulative bastard. "I do not have a traumatic past," she muttered defiantly, crossing her arms and did not mind how her outward maturity continued to plummet. The man was insistent and pushy, almost mockingly so.

"While I have to tell you my issues, you don't have to tell me yours? That's awfully hypocritical of you, Ariadne," he replied, steepling his fingers over the table, casting a half-lidded gaze that brought about two waves of goose bumps over her skin.

"I don't…!" She was beginning to flare up in defiance.

"Your problem with guns?" He dryly pointed out. "Trauma varies from person to person. My scars are different from yours, or at least I hope they are. What I don't know about you might be a reason why we're in Limbo."

_Ouch… Harsh- that was very harsh._ She internalized the wince but felt her left eyebrow unintentionally twitch. _He's been planning this for a while, he had laid out the traps of his speech, he was just waiting for me to walk into it._

"Ariadne, you can't bottle this up. You can't hide anything in dreams, Limbo makes you reveal. Don't forget, you can consciously and subconsciously affect this place. Don't be so childish." Cobb grabbed her clammy hands and squeezed them: the temperature reluctantly began to drop. His will battled against hers. She tried to pull away but his grip was unrelenting, "You have too much stubborn pride. Don't be childish." He repeated, adding more steel into his voice, "I've been ignoring your problems long enough because you told me that, I quote, 'it was fine.' Do you honestly expect me to believe that and let it be?" _Oh no. Not this again. _She concentrated on a spot a few inches above his right shoulder and did not deviate any further. "And no, I can't let this go. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?"

No… Not lately. She concentrated on everything else but the man in front of her: the shade of green in the grass and the exact same shade of green in the trees. The leaves in the trees yellowed and then browned and began to fall. Some feathers drifted down from the sky. _Alouette, gentile alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai._ In any given moment, it might begin to snow.

_You shouldn't be telling him. You don't have to talk to him. This problem of yours was already taken care of. …but neither final nor complete, there are traces. He's the only one here... _Cobb's eyes are too blue, icy blue… or green, some unique shade that couldn't be put into words. They bore into her. She really didn't like this feeling, it made her shift awkwardly in her seat; it also made her remember what she had tried to forget and was successful till now. There was an ant on the table, she was fascinated. (That was the general coping mechanism that she had- it's called: if you pretend that it's not there, it's not there.) "Limbo," Cobb's voice, unfortunately, was a battering ram to her little fantasy of denial, "is like a Catholic purgatory. It takes any small, what you might think is insignificant, dark spot in you and breaks it wide open. It's in Limbo's nature to do so and trying to keep it bottled UP will not only prevent you from leaving Limbo, but will tear you in half."

_Breath_. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Then, there shall be no evil. "À la Claire fontaine, M'en allant promener. J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle que je m'y suis baigné." Lowering her head to cover her eyes with her hair, she murmured slowly with care while wringing her hands together, voice caressing the lyrics, "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime jamais je ne t'oublierai…"

"Ariadne, please." Another siren drove by.

Opening her eyes, she glared at him for a really long time; a glare that she hoped conveyed her utter hatred of him at that moment and was disappointed to find that he wasn't fazed. Then, she deflated- obviously she wasn't going to win this one. _Give enough to make him not ask for more. _"When I was thirteen, at school, a school official called me out of class," she turned away and rested her chin on her hand and covered her mouth with the other, "And just like that. A gun, my parents' gun, made me an orphan." Keeping her face blank, she engrossed herself in the small fray at the edge of her shirt that unraveled under her fingers, "I got therapy for that, I accepted their deaths. I got help; I'm fixed." _You can't do anything else._

There had been dreams of two bodies, a lot of blood, and a gun, shining under an artificial light in the morgue. Leaning on her elbows, she furiously rubbed her eyes to try to rid the image from her memory. A hand touched her shoulder but she shrugged off the touch and pulled away. _You can't do anything else._

Now that she thinks about it, it probably changed her more than she already knew. _Bouncing in foster care from family to family, temporary social recluse, bullied…_ she reared back and drew in her courage to challenge the man sitting before her, _who cares, I got better and stronger because of it. _"It's all behind me now." _The end and fin, _she firmly thought, repressing the urge to sneer at him. "It's no big deal." _I dare you to say otherwise._

The projection of Mal had once said, "You don't deserve anything."

She was surprised when she found herself extremely tired and sapped of energy, unable to hold her poise correctly. Well, what did she do besides try to not talk? Nothing really changed: she's still Ariadne, she still doesn't like guns, and she still has nightmares of guns granted they're so faded and so common they lost their initial horridness, and she still blames her overactive imagination for her strain. Compared to Cobb, it's putting a whiny girl complaining about her lost toys with an elder man who had lost his legs. …Why was he still holding onto her hand? "Your self-confidence is so low it's almost detriment-"

"Shut up."

Cold and precise and yet serenely spoken; no more, shut down- she wants this conversation thread to end. Was that too much to ask for? That had hit too close to home.

This wasn't serious anymore, this was a joke. Why was he doing this, this gravitating-the-topic-towards-her thing? She doesn't need any assistance. She desired for this to be over. Not to mention, her head was throbbing and when she closed her eyes, she saw shades of grey. _This is really, really, really dumb and I'm wasting my time._ She stood up, "I think I should go." And before he could say otherwise, she stood on shaking legs and move quickly into the city to lose herself in the pedestrian crowds

Ten hours later, he finds her by the cliff-side, dangling her feet over a three thousand foot drop and throwing handfuls of sand over the edge. He talks to her, she easily opens up, and they have a conversation about 3D orientation of an object in space and the physics of the building materials. The topic didn't reopen and both were careful to give the metaphorical elephant a wide berth.

_Twenty-eight. 28_

The children left again. It was just Cobb and Ariadne in the house, contriving of ways to relieve boredom and the overwhelming monotony that came with daily routines.

On some days they have architecture contests. They stand on an office building with the city expanses before them and begin to create. The rules- no touching the house, beach, or the Penrose Triangle (they aren't sure who made it or why it's there and frankly, it is starting to make them rather uneasy). Upward, wide, into dizzying heights; maybe its pride or just a wish to let loose, they try to one up each other in terms of beauty with stability, originality with possibility, and they become more fantastic at every turn. (The projections accept this good-naturedly and move on.)

She turns her half of the skies purple and forms an army of blimps bearing the image of a city with a flick of her wrist. She promotes sky bridges between the high towers and split the top of the tallest skyscrapers like a monkey would to a banana. He turns his half of the sky into a defiant yellow and forms green clouds into a checkered pattern. He hangs houses from bridges and fishbowls from houses and waterfalls from fishbowls that pour into gutters fifty feet below. With a wave of his hand, his streets twist up the side of office buildings. She raises her hands and fixes his knowledge of the constellations; she creates a trail of stars that extend into the green clouds. He makes winter and fall clash with spring and summer. She forms a steel and glass Roman Coliseum. He stacks five Burj Al Arab onto each other and miraculously, they hold by a web-like matrix of cables.

She laughs gaily; he joins her.

_Twenty-nine. 29_

Dominic Cobb balanced a glass of red wine between two fingers, palm up, casually alternating between sipping and swirling as he stared at a small picture on a chest by the TV, it was a small photograph of Mal, the only one in his house. Ariadne had gone to take a walk to the bridge-side where the pigeons roamed. Alone, he molded the house to suit him so that he may sit and think and… he drained the glass of wine and contemplated the picture. He didn't dare to touch it, one could call it superstition. But there were unspoken rules in Limbo: if he believed it, it would happen. In the picture, Mal was sitting down with her favorite sun hat on a bench with the Pont Alexandre III and the Seine River behind her. She was smiling beautifully, flirting with the camera, favoring one side, head tilted toward her backdrop as if suggesting the viewer to join her.

He found himself contrasting his ex-wife with the girl… no… woman… he's living with right now. "She reminds me of you," he spoke to the picture, "Vivacious, determined," all of which were wonderful qualities. Dom looked at his glass, it had refilled itself with wine; he took another sip and turned back to the picture. "But the difference between you two is striking."

Ariadne was a headstrong woman with unimaginable amounts of creativity stored within her, just bursting out to be displayed to the world. She was mature and kind, strong and caring; she had vision, so much of it; and, Cobb admitted, he saw much of himself in her. She was inquisitive to the point that she pushed beyond social niceties if she thought that something was wrong. She was imperfect and stubborn; she had a past that he suspected to still influence her to this day that she refused to acknowledge.

And yet, despite all these bad qualities, "She's so full of life. She makes me feel…" He swirled his wine glass once more in apprehension. "You would've liked her, I'm sure." But Mal isn't here; she's dead. Guilt built up at the pit of his stomach, defying any means of suppression. He wasn't sure what he was guilty about but had a vague idea that his subconscious was trying to suppress _that_ idea too.

Mal continued smiling. _Oh Dom, I wish that I hadn't made life so hard on you. _If Cobb closed his eyes, he can envision his wife laughing by the portside, wind blowing her hair and skirt and she danced on wooden planks. He can remember that day like it was yesterday. Sometimes, he wished that it was yesterday.

"I won't ever forget you." He whispered hoarsely.

Mal's smile seemed to soften. _I love you. I'll always love you. You make me feel loved. Please remember that. You're my husband and I'll never forget how much happiness I've had when I'm with you. _Mal once said that. He toasted the picture frame and downed the drink. He set the glass down and rubbed the skin between his eyebrows, hearing Mal's voice echo in his head. _Dom, please remember: I love you so much that I want your happiness too._

_Thirty. 30_

Cobb handed her a fluffy towel, "it's getting late, might as well dry yourself off before the sea breeze kicks up." Ariadne bemusedly took the towel, striped yellow and green, sat on her knees lest the sand enters her bathing suit, and attempted to dry her hair without making it more of a tangled mess than it already is and failed miserably. "Had fun?"

"Lots, thank you." Feeling tired after battling the ocean waves, she wrapped the towel around her shoulders and noticed a decent sized sand castle, no, more like sand kingdom, at his feet. "Huh, trying to connect with your inner child aren't you?" she teased, raising her voice over the roar of the incoming waves and scooted over to examine the creation more closely. It was a sand-water mixture of multiple spires surrounding multiple wide streets. It was an unconventional way of making a castle, no need for buckets or sculpting tools. Cobb buried his hand in a sand pit filled with seawater that was beside him and took a handful of the water-sand mixture. Then he, drip by drip, made another smaller spire as an extended limb from a larger one. The mixture hardened on contact.

"I'm an architect," he raised an eyebrow, "It's what we do." The corners of his mouth lifted, betraying his outward nonchalance. Ariadne failed to suppress her laughter behind her hand.

"It's amazing how they stay up," she murmured and then groaned. "God, my skin is so pruned each of the wrinkles is a small canyon." She took a bit of sand and padded more stability into the base of the platform. Then, she took some of the sand-water mixture, admiring its malleable mud-like consistency from a hole filled with sea water and began making little mud people. "It would look too lifeless without people," was her explanation. The mud people began to move awkwardly, acting like projections, moving in one direction with a singular unknown purpose. Some melded into the towers and appeared on the other side without stopping.

He hummed thoughtfully, "I guess your right… whoops."

Ariadne looked up and saw that Cobb had accidentally knocked over one of the towers. Immediately, a loud rumble started behind her. She turned around in time to witness a building, peeking behind other buildings, beginning to shake. The top five floors of that building cleaved off in a mirrored fashion of how Cobb's spire was dismantled. "Did that building fall because your tower fell? How in the world?"

"I forgot that happens," he said lightly.

She didn't know how to respond to that statement and settled to clean up the mess, pushing the remaining broken tower off the platform. The more she pushed, the more she was aware of the loud creaks and groans behind her of debris that didn't want to move.

A pair of hands, larger and warmer, covered her hands. Her mind came to a screeching halt and she suddenly found that she couldn't put a logical sentence together. He was radiating so much heat that the hotness transferred through skin on skin contact and dove into her body. Cobb helped her push the remaining sand off the platform, slowly and gently. Because her cheeks were so hot, she didn't dare to look up. Finally, the sounds of a distant earthquake ceased and she was the first to draw away, albeit reluctantly. She curled up, knees to her chest and her arms circling her legs. The other didn't seem to notice her automatic defense instincts or otherwise didn't comment- for that she was grateful.

Instead, he looked over toward the horizon with squinted eyes; his skin was slightly tanned from the sun. "The day's almost over, Ariadne."

"I know. It was really productive." She joked, rubbing her hands together to loosen the sand grains.

"If you would call having fun productive, then yes," he leaned back on his hands, "it was productive. Perhaps," he ran a hand through his hair before turning to her and motioning her over, "come here." Her hesitation made him laugh, "I won't bite." She scooted closer until he, without warning, pulled her over and rested his hand on her opposite shoulder. She squeaked in surprise.

"Cobb!"

"Now Ariadne," he continued, undeterred and clearly thinking that this entire situation is hilarious. "I want you to imagine the greatest sunset before you."

"…"

She turned her head, puzzled, and was slightly unsettled by the proximity between their faces. Seeing the man nod encouragingly at her, she closed her eyes, thinking that it wouldn't hurt to try though she wondered what point he was trying to get across. She scrunched up her eyes in concentration, thinking and creating, seconds ticked by.

"Hey." Cobb mused, "Before you go overboard in grandiose opulence, you can open your eyes."

She opened her eyes, her mouth involuntarily dropped at the sight before her, the skies filled with violets, blues, scarlet, burning oranges and yellows, the sun, red and large, slowly sunk into the dimpled sea that glittered with imaginary diamonds. "Wow…" she voiced in a hushed tone. This was absolutely breathtaking; she wiggled her body in excitement, such beauty. She could feel Cobb's amusement radiating from his body but he stayed still. The skies were her canvas- she was the paintbrush. Awestruck, her stiff posture slackened, unintentionally, she leaned against the body beside her, unaware of her actions till the arm around her shoulder tightened, but she couldn't be too bothered, "This is a vision. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"You're right," she felt the voice tickle her ear, "it's beautiful."

_Thirty-one. 31_

The TV showed nothing but ongoing French dramas. There was a rather pungent smell of something burnt, maybe toast, which was a clear sign that meant that Cobb was trying to cook again.

She takes a strip of paper and twists it before taping the edges together and artfully placing the strip onto a flat surface and taping the structure down. She then proceeds to sketch out the arrangement, crosshatching the shade lines. "Hey Cobb, check it out." With a bandana pushing her hair back, her pencil in her mouth, using her thumb as an old-fashioned ruler, she must strike a rather strange image.

"What are you doing?" He asked from the kitchens.

"One dimensional art," she replied, making a little flourish at the shadows underneath the strip. Then, with a snap of the fingers, paper people started walking on one side of the paper, always on the same side and perpendicular to the surface, even when they were undoubtedly upside-down, "Kind of like a one-dimensional ouroboros, hmm?" She rested her elbows on the table and poked one of the people with the butt of her pencil. The person, who looked like an origami Yusuf, angrily stumbled and then made an obscene gesture at her. Another paper-person that looked like Eames pulled him to his feet and patted him reassuringly and pushed him to continue the path.

She looked through the circle that the strip of paper made and saw that Cobb had taken the spot across from her and was observing the structure with an amused expression. "Throw away all notions of gravity or at least make your own rules and yes, this will work." He prodded the top of the circle of paper; one of the paper walkers tripped and fell upwards. She imagined a faint paper-y scream reaching her ears. "Well, I just wanted to tell you, if you're hungry, that breakfast is ready."

_Thirty-two. 32_

"My ex-wife," Cobb handed her a small picture frame. "Mal," who, though motionless, still managed to flirt with the viewer. Ariadne took in Mal's dark ringlets, her aristocratic face, her glittering eyes, and felt an uneasy, burning churn at the pit of her stomach as she handed the frame back. "She didn't used to smile in the picture. After her passing, in my dreams, in this picture, she used to look hateful, angry, and wrathful. But now," he smiled fondly at the photo and placed it carefully back onto the wood top, "she smiles. I talk to her photo sometimes. I know how crazy that sounds." He laughed sheepishly.

"Why?" Ariadne tilted her head to the right and asked. She blinked in confusion when he gave her a strange expression, "She doesn't appear as a projection anymore?" Her hand brought her hand to her mouth as she whispered to herself, "Oh, I guess that was what Phillipa and James had indirectly told me…" But he still managed to hear her. Her head shot up as if she was contemplating a puzzle, "She hasn't been appearing as a projection?" She asked with a more disbelieving tone in her voice as she violently blanched at some realization that's most likely alien to him.

"Mal never gained corporeal form when I came back here, not since she died the second time." Cobb stepped closer towards her and was alarmed when she shrunk back.

"Ariadne?" He got no answer.

Unsure and quite lost, he placed a hand over her head and stayed in that position. "Mal is a 2D figure: she appears on 2D surfaces because I accepted her as a happy memory, a past memory that won't come back. 2D does not translate to 3D…"

He watched as the woman collapse back onto the couch and hug herself, which was, he noted, her classic defense mechanism. Then, to his surprise, Ariadne began to laugh. He wished frustratingly that he could read her mind, wondering what was bothering her. It was soft giggles at first and she hid it all behind her hand, but they sounded hysterical, worriedly so.

_Thirty-three. 33_

Since that conversation, the woman had not yet returned to her exact state of normalcy. In fact, it was almost as if she was anticipating a cataclysmic event to occur at any moment. Every day they went to 'work,' she was closer to him than usual, peering around him to stare suspiciously at the projections. She took the meaning of 'paranoia' to another level, and the absence of Phillipa and James did not soothe her at all. He tried asking her but it turns out that she was probably more private than he was, which was really saying something considering that he had spent years cultivating relationships with people he knew on a vocational-friend-ish basis with a bit of a Point Man –esque mindset. Simply put, she was a closed book.

He had consoled her nerves by taking her out for dinner or just out for fun. It didn't help, but she appreciated the effort. Whatever it was, he knew that she seemed to be waiting, or anticipating an inevitable. He had once tried to sit her down and tell her that, "what happens would be based upon your faculties. If you are scared that something will happen or if there is some event you don't want to happen, if it's at the forefront of your mind, chances are that it will happen."

To which she had replied, "That's exactly the problem." This gave him no hints of what her issues were and it was driving him to premature baldness and he knew that attempts to coax or force out her dirty little secrets would only result in her relenting one inch and no more.

That was then, this is now.

Now there are dark skies with an accurate star map. The clouds began to gather with seemingly magnetic attraction the moment they walked back from a dinner night out, signifying an imposing and unwelcomed change of plans. Ariadne had turned white but she had unconsciously snarled at the figure that was walking calmly across the street toward them with the rhythmic clicking of heels on the pavement. The projection stopped about two meters from their position and smiled grimly. That wasn't standard projection behavior.

"You imagine," Mal mused, standing under the light of the lamppost, "that little Ariadne would be surprised, but she knew I was going to make a reappearance. Now why is that?"

Amazingly, Cobb found his body moved in front of Ariadne as an automatic response, though his brain still couldn't compute the fact that his ex-wife was right there before him, in her same scornful, hating ire that dominated her façade before the Inception. He felt Ariadne's hold on his sleeve tighten and didn't understand the meaning of that gesture. It might be due to fright of the projection; it might be that she was scared for him, or… Well, she was uncommonly hard to read at times and he used to specialize in interpreting body language. "Mal. What are you doing here?" He asked with a calmness that did not mirror his inner sentiments.

Yet he couldn't help but notice that Mal was wearing the same dress of her death, on the window ledge of another hotel on the night of their anniversary. He also noted that the first time Ariadne officially met Mal was in the lower levels of his dreams of the hotel room. The Mal before him, the one smiling coquettishly towards him, purred. "Why do you think I'm here?"

"Cobb," Ariadne whispered, "Make her go away." Her grip got tighter, "Do something." Still, what can he do? He felt strangely disconnected from her, though he couldn't figure out why and it didn't exactly pose itself as the primary question until much later.

"Ariadne," Mal greeted in a warm voice, holding out a hand to shake. "How have you been since I've last seen you? Still sane?"

"Go away," was the muffled voice behind him.

Mal tsked. Cobb cocked his head to the right in askance to his own memories. Now that wasn't right: Mal's personality would never allow her, as a projection, to be that caustic. "Do you have a hard time gripping to your sanity, Ariadne? It's a bit pitiful, considering the fact that Dom is healthier than you are. Your endurance is rather poor." More puzzling is the fact that she seemed to ignore his presence all together. He noticed a small increase in the number of projections in the vicinity, walking around them as if warning Mal that one small move and…

"No," was a muffled groan, "Go away," followed the groan was a whisper. Alarmed, he pulled the woman closer to him for comfort, the snow crunched underneath his boots loudly. He can't, for the life of him, figure out why Mal was back as a projection. Her absence was permanent; he had made sure of that. The strange thing was that his projections did not touch his ex-wife; they got close, very close, but they never initiated physical contact. Almost like they were unable to touch her.

"Why are you here?"

It began to snow little white flurries. Mal looked up and held up a gloved hand in wonder, "I'm here because…" She trailed off. "Because you showed that picture frame…" It was a roundabout way to answer, no doubt she was telling the truth in small white lies. "Time," she murmured, "is one aspect, but the other is a need. Longing: it is a suffering from a one-sided love, from her to you, Dom." She smiled beautifully but her eyes were like a predatory hawk's. Ariadne was crying in hitching breaths; he held her closer. The snow was neither cold nor wet but the other pedestrians on the block began to bundle up for the winter weather. "How does she see you as? A man with a pull and man she does not want to leave, even if that means to never leave Limbo… Am I right? Am I wrong? Did you wonder… a mentor, a friend, something, to hazard a guess… more?"

"Not true." Ariadne mumbled, "Not true, not true, not true, not true…"

"Ariadne," He muttered over her hair. She was shaking so violently, "I-"

"Or, can it be that she only sees herself as second hand goods?" Mal gleefully continued. "You'll be thrown away as Princess Ariadne in the myth. You'll guide the prince through the maze and then he'll discard you like the useless little thing you are."

"That's enough," He demanded.

With those words, Mal threw her head back and laughed; she took a step back. A projection, tall and bulky under the thick layers of clothing, walked between them. Then, Mal was out of sight. But the damage was done and Mal left behind destruction that a tornado, earthquake, or hurricane can be envious of. That damage was concentrated in the woman he was trying to comfort, the woman who had just broken down, whose legs had long given way. She was on her knees and he was whispering words of comfort, hoping that something could bring her out of her state.

"Ariadne, I'm sorry. I don't know how she came back."

Ariadne forced her breathing to still but her voice was still shaky, "Shut up."

He wasn't expecting this reaction, "Mal…"

"Shut up," she spoke more clearly. "It's not your fault."

"What?" He asked in bewilderment, "What do you mean? Of course it's my fault. She's a lingering effect of my-."

"Stop it." She spat, "Just stop. She's not your projection, she's mine."

Shock… Shock really doesn't even begin to describe what he was feeling, though it would explain some of the clues that didn't add up in his head. Her guilt for her feelings manifested due to the catalyst that was her own dangerously low self-confidence. That was the lingering effect of her trauma, her self-image, her inferiority complex. The moment that she knew that Cobb's Mal will never come back was the moment she knew that her own Mal would. In Limbo, superstition brings about absolution; superstition or belief makes that belief real in limbo. She looked torn as to whether she should hide her face in his shirt or flee from his sight. He made sure to hold her tighter. "Ariadne…"

"No," her muffled voice replied, "I don't have to say anything. Please, just shut up."

_Thirty-four. 34_

He found her sprawled over the couch, staring catatonic at the TV as it played B-movies in French. He sat next to her, close enough to have her stiffen up but far enough that she didn't move automatically into her flight instinct. Then, he wordlessly handed over a glass of warm chocolate milk and was surprised when she took it.

One movie ended, another began. Another movie ended, another began. The new movie, a foreign film that didn't offer subtitles, was about a poor woman's journey to stardom. It wasn't till there was about four minutes before the conclusion that the heroine's voice translated into English. The voice was Ariadne's sullen voice superimposed over an accented robotic tonality.

"I'm sorry." On screen, a woman made a _moue_ at the audience as she went onstage to perform and sing. But instead of singing, she spoke into the mike, "I'm sorry."

On screen, the scene changed and centered on the woman's manager who waited with baited breath behind the curtain. The man rubbed his hands together as if praying for the woman's luck, "For what?"

"I'm sorry for seeing her in such a negative light." On screen, the woman received a standing ovation; tears ran down her cheeks, ruining her mascara. She sobbed and pointed to specific members of the audience, thanking them for their efforts. She said, "It's pitiful, I know. She's a projection of a projection." The movie ended as the woman blew kisses at her fans and the credits rolled.

Ariadne took in a shuddering breath and whispered hoarsely, "I just… I mean."

Cobb cautiously leaned over and wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She leaned her head at the crook of his neck and shoulder and he could feel her tears through his shirt. He didn't know what the future will hold for both of them but he settled for living in the moment. "I understand," he hushed, "its ok. I understand."


	7. 35 to 41

Author's Note: I am K. by Writer's Block. This entire chapter is all of the step by step anticipation. It's like this: you're in a race- you have maybe five meters, a respectable distance, to the end of the chapter, but there is this freaking chain attached to your ankle attached to god-knows-where, and you're crawling, trying to get to the finish line. Are you winning? I don't know; you're playing with yourself.

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Thirty-five. 35_

Ariadne walked into what she would call the sketchiest back alleyway she had ever seen in her entire short life, half-expecting muggers to leap down from the brick walls with iron pipes with a Viking-like war-cry as they ambushed their unsuspecting victim. The logical half of Ariadne decided that this would be an excellent time to mentally smack herself from this side back to Canada. Her boot squelched as she stepped into a pothole filled with filthy water. She groaned aloud as she realized that she had misjudged the depth of the puddle to be shallower than it truly is. After inspecting the damage (a few stains but no water seeping to her socks) she straightened up, blowing her bangs out of her face.

Why was she here again?

Oh right.

After that disastrous encounter with her own projection of Mal, who decided that she was going to tell Cobb every one of Ariadne's little secrets and her now apparent crush on him (if one would call that a crush, she wasn't quite sure since it sounded quite trite), Ariadne had burrowed deep into her own subconscious. For the first eight hours, she failed to convince herself that this was all a very, very bad dream. She devised a plan ten minutes later, and with that in mind, she eased off the couch, slowly taking Cobb's hand from her hip and stood, wincing when the floorboards under the carpets creaked loudly in protest under her weight. It's settled, this dependence was not healthy for her; in order for any progress to be done about the mystery of Cobb's missing totem, she has to leave this house. It wouldn't be difficult, Limbo offered an array of empty flats and houses, anything she needs she can buy with money she earned from the hospital or she can form in her mind.

With a self-satisfied nod, she had cracked her knuckles. There were some mementos that she would like to take with her that were in her - no, it wasn't hers anymore - Cobb's guest room. _Cobb. _She had turned to assess the sleeping form, she crouched down to stare levelly at his face- utter Zen-like peace and the worry furrows on his face had smoothed out as if they were never there. _I wonder what his expression was when Mal told him of my affections,_ she glumly thought raising a hand to brush a strand of hair from his eyes, _he didn't seem to react much at all. That's either a good thing or a bad thing._ She would be lying if she ever claimed that she was not disappointed by his lack of reaction just as she would be lying if she said that the sole reason she had for leaving the house was to find his totem.

She was running away from the inevitable whirlwind of emotions that would rear its head the next morning when the man would make her sit down and have a talk of romantic schematics. The thought of the ensuing embarrassing tête-a-tête and it's ending that she doesn't even try to imagine makes her stomach queasily protest.

Then again, it was time that she got back on track of the goal: to deliver Cobb back to reality and this was a good reason as any, no matter how cowardly it was. She had heaved a great sigh and looked wistfully into space.

If only…

Unfortunately, there weren't any such things as happy endings. There was hope. Leaning in, she had pressed her lips lightly onto his forehead, conveying every feeling regarding him through that kiss, _no matter what, business partner, mentor, friends, I'll always be thankful to you for showing me the unparalleled phenomenon known as Dreaming. _After making sure that the man was still asleep, she straightened and prepared for her departure.

A month later, give or take a few days, she had combed through most of Cobb's Limbo trying to find a clue, any trace of the Ariadne-projection. She had stopped some projections that she deemed were amiable enough to ask "Have you seen a woman that wears a purple scarf that looks just like me?" and to her surprise, whether they were her projections or Cobb's projections, they were as friendly as she had prayed for and more. She had scoured through public buildings, hoping to find a small flash of brown or a familiar face. No can do- cafes, stores, diners, office buildings, open apartments… Nothing came up.

One evening, a projection that looked exactly like Arthur (dressed in an impeccable suit ensemble, polished shoes, gelled back hair, crisp lines all around) asked her, "Ever thought of looking in the Triangle?" He nodded at said structure that peaked shyly out between two regular office buildings.

"…"

Cue mentally smacking herself over the head repeatedly. Why didn't she think about it before? Was there this supernatural force that encouraged her to shy away from the triangle? _Knowing my luck, probably._ _Well, cheer up_, this was her breakthrough. On one side of the office building, the windows lit up in a way that looked like a face was smiling brightly, close-lipped. "Thanks," she said gratefully.

"Anytime," Arthur had replied, smiling his patented Arthur-smile that included squinted eyes and an adorably wide smile. _Now that I think about it…_

Ariadne turned back to the smiling office building and then back at Arthur, who was still smiling but cocked his head five degrees to the left in askance. The facial expressions were exactly the same. Ariadne had blinked, "Ok, that's just creepy."

Having heard her, Arthur had shrugged, "It's Limbo," and flicked a minor speck of dust from his suit. He cleared his throat, "Good luck on your venture. Oh yes, Ariadne?" He tossed her a small box, "In it should be what you want. And be careful, he really does care for you."

"He shouldn't! I don't deserve him," she had replied defensively. Arthur raised an eyebrow, another patented Arthur look. She gingerly opened the lid and looked inside. She tested the weight of the grenade, _at least it wasn't a gun, he was that considerate, _and tucked the weapon into her coat pocket, "Why are you giving me this? Shouldn't you be trying to kill me? You know- white blood cells to a foreign body?"

Arthur had taken a moment to ponder, "Due to a number of factors, I believe. Because Cobb's totem hasn't been found, we still maintain our independence and our ability to reason. Limbo can be shared in such a way that either mind territories can have borders drawn or projections of different dreamers can mingle. First example would be the distinction between Cobb and Saito's world and the second would be Cobb and your world. Also, the fact that we know you and like you makes us less inclined to attack you." He straightened his sleeves and pulled on his tie, "As projections, we try to help. We can't find the projection of you nor could we find Mrs. Cobb, their psychological roots dig much deeper into both yours and his consciousness that we can reach."

"I see." She had slowly digested the information and nervously rubbed the back of her head. "That makes it all the more difficult for me to find her." She pointed behind her, "Are you sure that the Penrose Triangle holds-"

"You're never sure," he had hummed. "But that, right there, lying within the horizon and under your nose, is an option. Possibly the best one you have at this moment." He shielded his eyes from the sun with his hands but was careful not to meet her eyes.

"Take a leap of faith. At the same time," the projection of Arthur significantly paused as Ariadne had turned to him. "Make sure you don't lose yourself." His eyes were blue-green: Cobb's eyes.

And that was why she was here, trekking through the backwaters of the city with a sodding wet boot.

She couldn't recall the suspicious lack of roads (more like: there were no roads) that led to the infamous Penrose Triangle, the only sculpture that seemed to reek of malevolence. How? How can an inanimate object reek negative emotions? She can't really put it to words. It just felt _bad_. And it felt _worse_ the closer one is to the triangle. The fences around the the unfinished triangle were replaced by solid walls; she couldn't see whether the structure was finished or not. Supposedly, the zone was too hazardous for normal projections to walk through, hence the added security. But it wasn't like there were going to be troublesome haz-mats out there. She stopped at the end of the alleyway and met a looming mass of brick- another dead end. She wiped the sweat from her brow; _this would be a fantastic excuse to start learning parkour._

There was, to her right, one of those emergency stairwells that ran up and down the side of the building, stopping at the second floor as it had folded in on itself. If she can get to the top of the building she can review her options there, a pipe or an air vent or a conveniently placed walkway that would allow her into the construction zone. The stairs were slightly rusted at the corners and didn't seem to have any sort of lock or electric hinge mechanism, just a little spring attached to the back of the joints. Ariadne eyeballed the distance she would have to jump and latch onto the edge of the stairs, using her weight to pull the contraption down. She took a few steps back to get a running start and bent down in a sprinter's starting position. _Parkour it is._

_Thirty-six. 36_

Sandals inched slowly to the building ledge as she stared straight down at the small plot of land before her. There proudly stood the Penrose Triangle, complete with doors and windows and curtains. It stood on an edge, balancing on a single point, parallel with her eye line. Ariadne walked a few steps to the left and blinked, the Triangle was suddenly a one story tall triangle horizontal with the ground. _It's a matter of perspective and perception,_ she determined, _if I believe that I can clear the jump and land on that corner of the triangle, I can also believe that the surface that I land on is some stories up in the air._

The rooftops do seem to be in their own little disconnected world of greys and whites with an occasional splotch from oil or gum. Even the sky's color dulled dramatically when one looks up from the roof than when one looks up from the ground. She guessed that there was a privacy bubble settling around this block, canceling the noises of traffic emanating below. There wasn't even a hint of rumblings of engines, blaring horns or talking projections. A small crowd of pigeons were resting on the air vents, crooning behind her. She curiously turned around when they stopped. The pigeons were staring at her, blinking in unison every five seconds. Ariadne turned around and pretended that she didn't see that creepy sight.

The jump wasn't too risky; Limbo's edifices hugged each other in a way where proximity brings about intimacy. It was too bad that the Triangle isn't malleable to the machinations of her mind, or else this would be a thousand times easier.

Clear running path? Check. Distance measured to be plausible? Check. Grenade? …yeah, whatever, Check.

And she jumped.

_Thirty-seven. 37_

Dom Cobb loaded the Beretta Px4 storm, enjoying the familiar sound it made as he locked the cartridge into the chamber and chambered it. Turning around, with his arm loose but firm, he shot a couple of rounds into the dining room hallway, waited till the clouds of dust subsided, and inspected his results: still accurate. Guns are like bikes, you can't forget the feel or control of these instruments though it would be advisable to tune up before setting out.

"Don't be too rash, you were never the type to jump into situations without background checks. Sit down and think this out. You don't even have a plan," a voice piped up from behind him.

It was only due to the familiar baritone of the voice and the fact that he knew that Arthur was sitting on his couch that prevented him from shooting little holes into the projection. He felt the left corner of his mouth tick, "There's no time. Not from what you told me. All I know is that she's going to be in mortal peril if I don't reach her soon enough," he turned around and scowled, "Why did you tell her to investigate the Triangle?"

"Because that's where your primary suspicions lied," Arthur calmly pointed out.

He gritted his teeth, "And you didn't think to lie?"

"Projections can't, you know that." Cobb wilted at the projection of his Point Man's response and sat down on a chair and methodically changed the cartridge. The room was momentarily filled with sounds of gun parts placed and shuffled around on a wooden table and ended with another reassuring click.

"You openly sought her out to tell her this piece of information. Without that suggestion, she would've come back to me as I had planned within the week and we both would've tackled the problem together," Dom stressed the last word. "You…" He leaned over the dining room table where a roughly sketched, amateur blueprint of the Penrose Triangle was flattened down by text books on its corners. Without raising his head, he assessed the projection, "You aren't just my subconscious anymore, you're also part of hers. Am I right?"

The projection smiled his signature smile that Cobb liked to say was unique to Arthur Darling. "I assume so though I might be the only one of my kind here besides, perhaps, Professor Miles, since I see no projection of Eames or Yusuf or Saito. At this moment, however, I'm more you than her. Try to stay calm, I did offer her a box where she created her own weapon: a M26 hand grenade. It was either that or something that looks similar." That made Dom mutter curses under his breath. "Are you sticking to the Beretta? You know you can make a sniper rifle if you put your mind to it."

"Yes," Dom muttered sarcastically under his breath, "Why don't I dream a little bigger and arm myself with a Milkor MGL." He rolled up the blueprints and placed them in a cardboard tube, "I have to pull Ariadne out of that potential disaster before she goes ahead and…" He coughed and sneezed as the finer dust particles from his short shooting experiment finally reached him. He massaged the skin between his brows and sighed, "That woman is so headstrong and stubborn."

"You've been keeping an eye on her," Arthur stated with a questioning lilt at the end. The projection leaned back with a satisfied air when Cobb didn't immediately respond. Arthur clasped his hands together and waited patiently.

"Through various eyes of mine, yes, I have. If I can feel the unusual aura around the Triangle, then I know that she can too, even if it didn't occur to her at first. Her curiosity knows no bounds," Cobb said, walking to the doorway and turning off the lights. "Can't well leave her alone, can't I?"

He felt his way back and cautiously reached out, skimming his fingers over the dining table, searching for his Beretta.

"You love her."

Tucking the gun into his belt, Dom glanced back with an unreadable facial expression. "You would know," he said before giving a hollow laugh. "After all, I'm essentially chatting myself up, just a notch higher on the sanity level from chatting to a picture of my ex-wife who was a portion of my guilt for the better part of my exile."

"But she left you." Arthur said blandly, the window behind him lit him up in silhouette, making him smaller than he appeared. "Because you didn't make your intentions clear, because you were scared of the repercussions should you return her feelings."

The feeling could be likened to a knife through the gut. There was a tense silence between dreamer and projection that the air crackled. The projection observed Cobb's posture and the invisible fire in his eyes and he wisely decided to change the subject. "So if you are going to jump into the fray with no plan, surely you have a rough strategy."

Dom looked up at the ceiling and let out a breath. "The negative emotions that Ariadne had bottled in her had manifested into the image of my ex-wife whom I'm almost certain resides in the Triangle. I'm worried that Mal has something planned for her… I don't know much else but I do know that I have to go after her." A sixth sense had brushed against his mind, giving him a small vision of what could be an undesirable future. Death in Limbo: an endless loop of living and dying with the same haunting memories chasing and tormenting you. It would be a never ending chase: like a dog snapping at the heels of a rabbit that goes on and on for eternity in a setting where time was completely fluid. Shuddering at the possibility, Cobb opened the door and stepped out.

"Pity that projections can't help in these sorts of endeavors. Well, I'm sure you know how to make yourself at home. Bye Arthur."

The projection waited patiently till the door clicked shut behind him. Bathed in the darkness, he muttered to the quiet atmosphere the revelation that Cobb made at that moment outside on the sidewalk, "Ariadne left you because she was scared for the exact same reasons that you are worried of."

_Thirty-eight. 38_

She can't recall the exact moment the Penrose Triangle had transformed from a non-entity- actually, scratch that last thought- from a molding, benign objectification of the idea behind paradox the duplicities behind the idea of paradox into a malicious structure that seemed to have a life of its own. She wasn't quite sure whether it was possible for a projection to take on the form of an inorganic thing such as an edifice but in the duration of her stay in Limbo, she learned that anything was possible. What would a building embody? Stability? A shelter in a sort of sentient form? How strange would that be? Shaking her head, Ariadne slipped into the triangle through a shattered window and kept close to the walls. She was straying in her thoughts.

The Penrose Triangle sat at the edge of her mind. As in, the mind is the landscape of a cliff leering over an abyss and the triangle sat precariously on that edge. She never gave it too much thought after initial interest upon seeing that it wasn't finishing as quickly as she had wanted it to. It was too hard to keep dwelling on the Triangle, it was much easier to bring it up and then throw it back onto the edge of that cliff where it belonged. So they say that that was the charm of paradoxes, one is reluctant to think of them, to rehash them out, to try to rationalize… rationalize a paradox? It'll be easier to make a kitten bark at strangers.

She placed an ear to the wall: no noises save for the distant humming of the AC system on a lower level. There was no electronic whirling or any elevator activity. And there were definitely no people around, or if there were, they weren't moving. She came to a hall intersection and briefly toyed with the idea of somersaulting to the other side like they do in 007 movies.

She was paranoid enough to not turn on the lights. The light coming in through the window was hazy at best. It was obvious that the interior hasn't been cleaned in a long time. The carpet had a swirl pattern design on it with concentric circles at every branch of a swirl. The carpet was perhaps once red. Ariadne sneezed.

The suspicion that the triangle had a connection with Cobb's missing pewter top had also sat on that same edge but never brought to the surface. The totem had similarities to a paradox in Cobb's conception- the man was trying his hardest not to think about it. The totem was connected with the truth, which walks in the form of the projection of Ariadne, another idea he didn't want to venture into. The truth that he has a reality, a life, a family with kids whom he had abandoned for his dream world; the truth that in some ways, his dreams portray his ideal life and he would rather prefer this than that harsh world outside. In time, the virtual reality of a person becomes a life- the longer one stays in there, the less the outside world appeals or makes much sense. It would take a lot of will power to rip oneself away and that was Cobb's problem that Ariadne had tried to address before he countered her with her own deep-settled issues with self-image. Ergo, both totem and its keeper are somewhere in the triangle. This place is a lost-and-would-rather-not-be-found center.

So they say that sixth senses are often underestimated for their values; she still can't understand why the Penrose Triangle was so evil. Even the nature of paradoxes shouldn't make it so repulsive- something must be in it that she thinks is evil. There was something she wasn't connecting.

She opened the door to the stairs devoid of projections and propped it open with a chair. She had no plan… The highest floor was closer than the lowest floor, it'll be reasonable to start from top to bottom. That's a start.

Mid-step up, the answer hit her so hard that she stumbled over her own two feet and grabbed the hand rails.

Limbo is a two-way street- _so they say_.

_Thirty-nine. 39_

"Mal is there," Cobb said to the thin air, that statement encouraged him to quicken his pace to the underground subway stations. "Fuck." That sentiment, though uncharacteristic of his normal temperance, did a good job of conveying the rising panic in his heart. He pulled the collar of his jacket forward, an outward gesture of his anxiety. "God damn it, Mal is there with the totem and Ariadne is… god damn it."

The underground was a sector of Limbo that was his and solely his. He had created this from the dredges of his mind, inspired by London, New York, and other metropolitan areas. A long time ago, he had placed a small subway car with a work hatch that could lead to basically anywhere in the crowded city and he is certain that there is a passage to the construction zone of the Penrose Triangle. He had a small, temporary, infatuation with the idea of travelling solely though the underground. Looks like the car would finally be of some use.

It makes sense. The freakish nature of paradoxes would be suppressed in reality simply because they failed to exist. But in dreams, anything is possible and they form underlying repugnant smells. (It's what made Arthur so valuable; the man manipulates paradoxes like a bird uses wind to ride currents. He was a man in a million or even a billion. For most people, it isn't the best for one's health to work so closely with them.)

The repellent nature of paradoxes attracts ideas of similar course. "The totem would be there, so would Ariadne's Mal." He felt the overwhelming urge to slap his forehead. "Obviously," he groaned, "obviously that would be the case." A subway train flitted by without stopping, stirring a couple of pieces of paper on the ground. He caught one in the air and spied that it had a picture of Mal and the heading: "Have You Seen This Woman?" He viciously tore it up and threw the scraps behind him. "The problem would be-"

_Forty. 40_

"What the hell am I supposed to do?"

Ariadne slumped forward. She had been sitting on the stairs, trying to work out this troublesome dilemma, tossing and catching the grenade. "Defeat her, like in those video games? Kill her?" She shook her head. "No, no," she murmured, "can't be too easy. Mal is a part of me, I can't forget that. Most likely it'll be something subconscious-psychology related- like I have to make some self-discovery that invalidates her existence." Cobb must have killed his Mal every time he worked in an Extraction and expected her to come back to life the next time he dreamed.

She heard tales from Arthur regarding Cobb. In the relaxing solitude of the warehouse as they hashed out plans for the Inception, Arthur had mentioned that he tried everything. "At first, Mrs. Cobb's untimely deaths were accidents; he didn't want to kill her. But then he knew that it was interfering with our line of work. Shooting her, pushing her off high ledges, other unspeakable actions," the Point Man had shrugged as he straightened his respectable pile of papers and files.

"Sometimes, he tried to find ways to make Mrs. Cobb useful. She's a projection that Cobb took with him- that usually doesn't happen." He had paused, "It almost became a game for him." Seeing her aghast expression, he quickly said, "Yes, it seems morbid enough and it pains him every time, but in that way… you see, it's less traumatizing to see death if you see it all the time. Do you see? The faux morbid-ness and his guilt are mutually exclusive."

Ariadne had crossed her arms to show her dissatisfaction with the explanation. "Did you ever wonder the underlying issues as to why she followed him and why he kept bringing her in?"

"It was his private affair," Arthur had demurred. "I wasn't the person to pry." She'd bet her university savings that he was lying; it was in his Point-Man-nature to pry.

_I bet he failed and didn't want to admit that he had been thwarted._ She had viciously thought. _As a Point Man, he would know how to do covert investigations._

Ariadne jolted herself out of the memory and irritatingly rubbed at her forehead. "Apparently I wasn't," she muttered sourly. "Headstrong Ariadne, prying Ariadne, nosy Ariadne, open Ariadne- curious and curiouser."

She impatiently stuffed the grenade back into her pocket. "Headstrong Ariadne is just about to brashly rush into danger with no plan between her two ears but that's how she's going to tackle the problem." She stood up and felt momentarily dazed as blood rushed out of her head, "Armed with a grenade and her own physicality."

She marches up and doesn't think about the consequences.

_Forty-one. 41_

It's been nearly a minute since he pressed the elevator button going up. He had spent that time pacing in small circles sick with worry and angrily kicking at the walls.

"She would rush into this," he groaned, glaring at the rust spot on the elevator doors, trying to bore a hole through with his gaze alone. "She's the type of person to. Great, what can I do? What are the choices presented to me?" A soft musical note sounded, signaling that the elevator arrived. "Finally, what took this stupid contraption so long? I couldn't-" he stopped his monologue in mid-sentence, noticing another figure in the elevator. Cobb blanked his face tabula rasa till a rock could be envious. "Miles, good afternoon."

The elder man tipped his hat and held the door open with his cane, "Dom, pleasant surprise."

"Pleasant surprise, my ass," Cobb hissed as he walked in, pressed the button for ground floor. He stood by the projection's right, feet shoulders' width apart and hands clasped together in front of him. The other appeared to not have heard him, or if he did, he didn't show it.

"Going up," the elevator announced as the door slid closed.

The first eight seconds were possibly the most awkward eight seconds of his life. He found Miles a tad intimidating back in the days when he was trying to charm and court Mal but his own projection of Miles went beyond the line of awkwardness into downright I-want-to-sink-into-the-floor sort of realm. Miles had been a stable entity in his life, once a father-in-law, he was now a mentor and a friend, never changing from his calm advice and thought provoking questions and reason. "Have you been thinking of a plan or are you a man of action, Dom?" Miles asked as the elevator hitched, creaked, and groaned from untold amount of years of disuse.

"Have all of my projections been secretly corresponding with one another for a coup d'état?" He dryly remarked.

"Only the ones that Ariadne and you share which include the inception team and I. We're a close-knit group these days. We play poker every fourth night and bet upon the outcomes of football teams such as Manchester United and Real Madrid," Miles replied with equal dryness. "On a more serious note, we do communicate with each other. Now, my question?"

"There is none, I need to get Ariadne out of the triangle and regroup. Hopefully, this time, she'll stay and talk to me." Cobb gritted his teeth and tried his best to act polite and not show his impatience.

"Ahh, Ariadne," Miles sighed in a manner that made one unable to tell whether it was due to wistfulness or exhaustion. Cobb kept his line of sight fixed to the row of numbers above the elevator door and watched as the illuminated numbers moved to the right from G4 to G2. "What are you going to do about her once you return?"

The elevator rumbled in protest; Cobb sharply turned, "pardon?"

"How are you going to approach her once you are back in reality?" The elder hummed, "At this point, she had saved you and you will ultimately save her. The relationship between the two of you is complicated to put it simply. Everything has changed." The lights flickered as the elevator shuddered. "Do be careful, Dom. Though I have placed all my faith in you and my betting chips that you will make it out of here the second time without such shortcuts such as an inception, I want to stress the importance of keeping one's head. It looks like your stop is here."

"First floor, Lobby," the elevator intoned. Cobb stepped out and (physically leaned) recoiled back as a strong waft of repellant paradox odor bombarded his senses.

"Safe adventure and pleasantries to you," Miles tipped his hat as the elevator doors slowly closed. "Good day."


	8. 42 to 48

Author's Note: It's been a long time since I've gotten back into fanfiction in that time, I've read books, listened to music and watched movies, so there are some strange references out there. Be warned.

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Eventual Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Forty-two. 42_

Mal is a sad rendition of the personification of despair if it were to ever walk among the living, infecting the world with maladies of mental monstrosities. Putting aside the alliterations, the situation was quite serious, judging by how close Mal was holding the knife to Cobb's Ariadne-projection's bare neck. The logic of the scene doesn't quite make sense: Mal can't kill the projection because Mal is a projection of Ariadne, Cobb's Mal can kill but Ariadne's Mal can't. That's how it works. …Correct? Judging by the glint in Mal's eyes, Ariadne did not wish to take the chance, should she be wrong… Well. One shouldn't play with the lives of Truth, especially when it's Cobb's Truth. "The death of the famed pewter top," Mal said conversationally, "can only be achieved through intent of ideas as a metaphorical ritual."

Everything in Limbo is symbolic, "Yes, that is the general way to eradicate a projection." Ariadne murmured, holding her hands up, palms forward, in a surrendering gesture. This Mal had to be killed in Cobb's Limbo; there was no other way to eradicate her. Mal's eyes narrowed as she yanked on Projection-Ariadne's hair, eliciting a pained gasp from the prisoner, and digging the sharp edge of the knife into her skin. "Wait, stop," Ariadne walked cautiously forwards, unsure what her next course of action should be. _Move enough to not illicit any random actions; if Mal knows that you don't intend to do anything at this very moment, she will feel secure._

Mal held up the pewter top between her forefinger and her thumbs, looking at it with great interest. "Is this what I really want?" Mal touched Projection-Ariadne's cheek and affectionately pecked it, "Is this where you tell me to re-think my actions and to change? Then you must know that." Je ne regretted rien.

"We know that's impossible," once again, she surprised herself with the calmness in her tone that belied the fight-or-flight response that was running haywire in her body. The weight of the grenade in her inner jacket pocket acted as a deterrent from stark terror, but only stark terror; she had to remind herself that Mal knows about the grenade because she knows, "I just want to understand who you are."

"Psychology is a wonderful aspect to study, ma chére. But you shouldn't toy around with it." Mal smiled in understanding, "The death of this girl will mean that Cobb will lose himself." _We both know that. _Ariadne frowned; steadfastly ignoring the way Mal forced Projection-Ariadne's cheeks to pucker in a mocking representation of a fish and the tears leaking through the prisoner's eyes. Ariadne wondered whether she would be crying if she was held in the exact same hostage situation. It was unsettling watching oneself being abused to that extent.

"You're my failure," She managed to keep the harmonics of the sentence as neutral as possible. "If I wanted to save Cobb, you'll do everything in your power to make sure I don't succeed. You define what I cannot do and what I refuse to do." Of course it's as obvious as that: she had come to realize that her mind was a real piece of work, someone would've sent her to the mental institution if they knew that she was this messed up. That thought reminded her of her golden bishop that sat snug in her back pocket (it still falls the wrong way.) "It makes you stronger."

Mal cocked her head in a chilling Ariadne-like manner, "Are you going to stop me?" Ariadne felt her hands go into her inner coat pockets. The nettings that covered the grenade were coarse to touch. Mal narrowed her eyes, "You wouldn't do it." She declared.

"Would I?" She felt her breathing and her heart quicken as she stepped even closer, taking care to meet her mirror counterpart straight in the eyes before directing her gaze back onto the enemy. "It'll hurt both of us, yes, I'm aware of the fact. But when all other paths are closed, one tends to go for the ones that remain open, correct?"

The other woman sneered, tossing her hair back with a flick of her hand, careful to keep her grip on her prize, "All bark and no bite, girl. You're too scared to actually throw it." Ariadne's eyes wandered around the room and wondered whether there was any field advantage for her: windows on her right extending from the ground to the ceiling, various workspaces and rolling chairs on the left, and a door that led to the paradoxical staircases in front of her. The lack of light leached the brightness; she had been staring so long at the shades of grey in the room that if it wasn't for the view of the sky, she would've believed that color had simply ceased to exist. She could hear her own heartbeat and Mal's harsh breathing overlap Cobb's projection's shallow breathing.

Ariadne shrugged, idly tossing the grenade is her hand and shook her finger as she corrected, and "I have some bite in me."

Projection-Ariadne took that as a cue to violently twist out of her captor's hold and screamed when Mal's kitchen knife dug into her back. _Shit!_ With all her strength, Ariadne flung the inactivated grenade as a projectile towards the scuffle, knocking the knife out of Mal's hand and watched it as it slid across the wooden floor. For a split second, she took in the sight of the blood dripping down the projection's back and fought down the nausea and hardened her resolve. Then she lunged at her own projection with a wordless cry, preparing to fight tooth and nail in the most ungraceful manner ever to save Cobb's truth.

_Forty-three. 43_

Cobb took the stairs three steps at a time, taking care to watch where his feet land in case the stairs decide to suddenly channel Penrose's spirit. "Second to last floor," he repeated under his breath like a mantra, "She's on the second to last floor." Cobb knows this because his projection knows this, the frail tether he had with his truth was transparent and as delicate as spider's silk, but it was there and it was beginning to strengthen. "Damn it," he wasn't moving fast enough but he had to practice caution. This sector of Limbo was infinitely times more dangerous than its surrounding areas. Ariadne should've known that.

"At this point," Miles had said, "she had saved you and you will ultimately save her. The relationship between the two of you is complicated to put it simply. Everything has changed."

He really shouldn't be faking ignorance as he knew exactly what the projection was implying: his relationship with that woman. Cobb laughed to himself, sharing a personal small joke as he grabbed onto the handrails and pulled himself up another three steps. Before the Inception case, he never even imagined the presence of another woman in his life, sleeping in his house, playing with his kids. _I live in a world without color; the only thing that seemed to be moving was the train_. Was there such a thing as a slow burning affection, where you only realize your love to another after there is no turning back? He reflected over the moments they shared: _there were a lot of them weren't there, how they just pile up without you noticing._

And then, the next thing you know, she's a permanent fixture in your life, trying to save you, and kill herself. _Perhaps not intentionally, but the lengths she would go for you with no considerations of her own limits is worrisome. Her abysmally low self-esteem is a factor. _Sighing,Cobb looked up the long spiral of stairs. _This is ridiculous: why the hell weren't the elevators working?_ The Penrose Triangle laughed at him as he mentally shook an angry fist at this contraption.

His heart skipped a beat when he heard a scream above on one of the upper floors and winced as he felt the phantom pains of a knife digging into his back. _Shit! _He pushed his legs forward, ignoring the battery acid burn that cried bloody murder in his muscles. _Keep in the present, Dom, no distractions._ He coughed into his hand and cursed angrily when he saw blood; his head began to spin. _Stay alive, Ariadne. _He silently ordered. _You better stay alive._

In front of him, one of the doors to the stairs opened, he could hear shoes clicking on the hard floor, "Cobb," the voice was familiar. He looked up.

_Forty-four. 44_

_This is where I should be thinking of regrets, unfortunately, I have no regrets. _The glass from the broken window dug into her fingers and some still clung onto her arm by some freak nature of gravity but she was so far beyond the point of pain that pain was registered as a mere annoyance, like a small tick in the background of this huge painting called 'Ariadne's Issues.' She uncomfortably adjusted her grip and frowned when more glass pieces burrowed deeper into her skin. _That should hurt._ She silently informs her brain, nudging at them to register that there is such a thing as pain. She hung precariously via fingertips over the edge of the Penrose Triangle, kicking her legs at the smooth building and vainly hoping for a ledge for a brace. The windows stubbornly held together. Her arms are already tired and protesting and she's pretty sure that she can't keep this up, hanging in a place where death is only seven stories away. _I can wait for the Triangle to pull its paradoxical magic and transform into a one story structure._

_Or I can just let go._

… _As if._

She breathed in and exhaled. _I am the embodiment of Zen and meditation; I am calm as a Buddhist monk. When I let go, I'll die and forget myself and stay in Limbo forever until Cobb has to save me, if he will, and we'll have this huge reversal of roles of victim and savior. Or we'll both frolic in this hellhole till the ends of time. _A wind caught a strand of her hair, bringing it to her face where it sat there and irritated her, she wanted to brush it off but she had no extra hands. _Any extra hands I'll get will be used to aid me in staying in this Limbo-like position forever. I'm in Limbo in Limbo. _She laughed loudly before descending into a fit of coughing. _Shit, I can't breathe right. Mal did a number on me._

Knife or not, her projection fought dirty (like her). _I didn't think that she can have such a… kick in her, not to mention her punches. _Her ribs wouldn't be willing to allow her to forget; neither would her black eye. She looked down and coughed again, watching in interest how the little glob of blood slowly fell to the concrete. _I'm still a long ways up. _She unconsciously curled her fingers tighter around the ledge. _I hope that Cobb's truth is ok. _Last time Ariadne saw, Cobb's projection was lying face first on the carpet, knocked out by blood loss and a blow to the head but still alive. She licked her lips, "Hello? Hey, is anyone there?"

In return, she received nothing; another infernal strand of brown hair landing on her cheek. _That was to be expected._ Again she sighed and parroted Mal's farewell, "You'll always be second hand goods. He'll never love you back."

The projection's screams had sounded like her own; when she was younger, every time Ariadne had buried her face in her pillow and let her frustrations loose through a muffler, she sounded exactly like that. (Cobb's personification of Truth didn't help much though she did try to stay out of the fight; she was too weak and vulnerable for her own good. She was barely corporeal at this point.) Mal's grip around her neck had caused her to see black spots when they grappled, each struggling to regain dominance. Mal fought viciously in a flurry of blows and counterblows. Mal's words hurt more than her actions.

Ariadne slowly blinked as some glass pieces fell off the ledge and into her face. Her eyes followed the glasses descent. There was a large crowd of projections right under her, she could only hear their dull roars but she knew that they were threatening her. _Pitchforks and torches, just like the olden days. They're Cobb's projections. As Cobb becomes more conscious, so does his projections, which begin to seek out the foreign body, ie, moi. Thank god they're not Mal's. But next time, Mal'll bring a gun or some other heinous weapon. She'll learn from her mistakes. I know this because Mal knows this. _

_I wonder why she left. Why did she run away? Was she scared? That's not normal hate-driven projection behavior unless her standard behavior wasn't to kill and destroy but to haunt, like Cobb's Mal. Cobb's Mal was really good at haunting. My Mal had a chance, it would've taken two seconds to run over and crush my fingers until I let go. How strange. I don't know the reason why… _

A pair of hands, hot to the touch, grasped onto her wrists, not too hard to bruise but enough to trust. Ariadne tilted her head back, following the hands to their original owners and smiled brightly in greeting. Cobb looked over her with a careful expression on his face, "I got you Ariadne."

"Really?"

"Really. You can let go now," when she did, more pieces of glass, stained with her blood, fell seven stories to the angry mob below. Cobb's grip didn't falter as he slowly hauled her up and over. Her elbows and knees crunched onto the sharp bits; she winced and staggered to her feet, only for her legs to fail her. As she collapsed, a pair of arms pulled her forward and into a warm body, "Whoa. It's ok. Relax. It's ok."

She heard the dull roars of the hostile projections like a faraway dream, "Don't lie," her fingers curled around his shirt as she turned her head to rest her cheek on the white fabric, staining it with her blood, "It's not ok."

"It's ok, now." He insisted as he pulled her in closer and she allowed herself to temporarily give up control into something comforting and safe. She felt dirty, her hair was matted to the point that it'll take hours to untangle her hair; she closed her eyes and hesitantly touched her face: she's crying.

Exhaustion racked her body as she shuddered, closed her eyes, and counted to sixty. A couple of meters away, she spotted a tall figure leaning over the projection's still form and listening to her chest and mouth, checking for severe injuries. The lack of light hid most of his features but his silhouette is still really familiar from his neatly combed hair to his impeccably pressed suit. The projection of Arthur Darling made a positive hand signal and proceeded carry Cobb's truth out of the room. There were too many details to ponder. How did Arthur come to help Cobb? Where was he? What had happened when she was gone?Ariadne shifted her eyes to gaze at the whole expanse of the room. In the shadows, by the broken windows, she saw something that looked very familiar that energized her through her curiosity.

Slowly and reluctantly, she untangled herself from the man and walked a few steps to the curious item, kneeling down to touch the netting around the egg-shaped g_renade. _She ignored shouts of warning as she gently picked it up and turned it over in her hands, marveling at the fact that the pin was gone. _But it hasn't exploded yet; is it a faulty one that will detonate at the most inconvenient of times? Any small disturbance could trigger it; it's such a fragile little thing. _Bringing the weapon to her lips, she gently planted kiss onto the cold surface. _This would explain Mal's sudden departure; she's scared of non-existence. The thought of it must send shivers down her spine. Fear drives her, it's why she exists. _Ariadne laughed and coughed. _A little thing like this saved me. _A heavy hand rested on her shoulder; she didn't bother looking back, "What happened, Cobb?"

"My projection unpinned the grenade and rolled it," the same hand gently caressed her cheek. _She knew that the weapon won't kill, at least not now._

"Mal still has your totem."

"Yes, but we have the embodiment." _But we need both. She knows that we'll at least be chasing after her for the pewter top and she'll set up a trap._

Ariadne craned her neck back and looked up, "Are we leaving now?"

The hand paused, "The crowd outside says otherwise and it's too risky to take the underground passages, but they'll lose their energy in a couple of hours. We'll wait it out. Meanwhile, Arthur's in the nearby office where they have a couch for the injured. He's looking for bandages." The hand resumed tracing small circles on her cheek, "We need to take care of you too." It was an unspoken order but she recognized it for what it was. She closed her eyes and nodded, leaning back to surrender herself to the warmth and silence once more.

_Forty-five. 45_

She sat by the edge of the broken window, taking care to avoid the glass shards that would be a pain in the ass to sit on, pun intended. Leaning over the edge, she contemplated the fall, should she had fallen, how long the drop would take and would she even feel any fright since the sensations would be what would equal to a Kick. Holding up her hands, she turned them over and admired the bandage work. _I can still wiggle each individual finger. Cobb must have a lot of experience in first aid. _She stole a glance at the office room where both Arthur and Cobb tried their best to heal the other Ariadne.

_Cobb won't let me move. It's a pity that I can't hear anything about her over the crowd._ She glared at the crowd below and willed them wither and die. _They'll only get worse; I had anticipated this a long time ago. He was right; there are fewer of them down there. He's usually right in these aspects. _Then her mood plummeted; her right hand cupped half of her face. _Cobb…_

The thought of the man made her feel... She wasn't quite sure: the emotions were ineffable but strong. It was a whole river of them, pouring out of her, directed at this one man. When he was bandaging her arms and hands, when he was prodding her torso for internal injuries, she could only concentrate on how hot his touch was and stopped herself from leaning in. ("Ariadne? Don't try to move too much, alright? Just rest.") _Why couldn't Arthur examine me? It would've been less awkward. _She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her head in her arms. _That's the root of the entire problem isn't it?_

The first time Professor Miles introduced her to his son-in-law, she was curious, eager to have, from what the Professor implied, a mentor whose expertise in the world of Architecture was renown and praised in the small elite circles. When she learned about the skeletons and gravestones and tombs that resided deep in his closet, she resolved to bring them out, a little part of her wanted to see the mind of a broken man. That's what she had categorized him as: a broken man, split cleanly in half by a train. At that time, he was more subject than human. She resolved to fix him. Over the course of the Inception project, she came to view him as a friend, someone she could trust with her life. The number of people she can rely on as implicitly could be counted with on one hand. She held up four bandaged fingers: _there aren't many._

She coaxed him apart and learns how he is human and how he is absolutely amazing. It's impossible to name the exact moment he becomes more than a friend. _Why do I try so hard for him? Why am I so determined to save him, to sacrifice so much to save him? Any normal person would've raised their arms and given up months ago. Why do I still persist? _She cracked open an eye and stared blankly into nothingness, she blinked out tears. _Am I expecting gratitude from him, what do I want? Why…?_

_Why does it hurt so much? This pressure in my chest, it feels horrible. Do I actually believe that if I keep trying so hard, that it'll disappear? Do I think that the pains and trials will end? So why do I keep trying?_

The door to the makeshift hospital room opened; Ariadne looked up; Cobb had opened the door. Behind him, Arthur was continually monitoring the other Ariadne's state and offering her water. "How is she?" Ariadne worriedly asked, hugging her knees tighter against her body.

"Stable and sleeping. Projections heal uncannily fast." He sat down on her left, so close that their thighs were brushing against each other. She was thankful that he didn't further question her choices of keeping a faulty grenade in her pocket. He wrapped an arm around her, mindful of her bruises, his breath tickled her ear, "thanks to you, we'll be able to relocate back home pretty soon."

_There was once a princess named Ariadne who fell in love with the hero Theseus and, disobeying her father, helped him find his way through the Cretan Labyrinths that holds the famed Minotaur by offering him a ball of string…_

Ignoring the aching in her chest, Ariadne closed her eyes, "I'm glad."

_So why…?_

_Forty-six. 46_

Night fell over the skies of Limbo. Night comes and goes on a whim and can last as short as a few minutes and as long as days. To someone who's trapped in Limbo, night is always the required eight hours of sleep but to one who is still aware of reality, it tends to skew the perceptions. Everything in Limbo gains that much more dream-state quality in them. Arthur stepped out of the office, wiping his hands on a piece of towel with a report on the tip of his tongue, "She's still breathing shallowly. We have to wait for the wound in her back to heal a bit more until its safe enough to move but she's recovering."

_You don't treat patients like that. He's still ignorant about standard first aid procedures. _

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine." Ariadne's posture relaxed slightly, "What about afterwards?"

"We're going to need to return home," he easily replied, having had a lot of time to strategize in his head, "It's easier to create weapons if I have the blue prints, which are all hidden between my books. The other Ariadne will recuperate there with Arthur while you and I will go out into the city and search for Mal and hopefully distract her from my more vital projections. If we move fast, my subconscious, them," he jerked his head at the dwindling mob below, moving about angrily like ants, "then they shouldn't be able to catch us. It takes a while for what I know to translate to them."

"How?" She ran a bandaged hand through her hair and winced when the pressure applied to her wounds still shot sharp pains up her arms, "How come the last time I was here, in Limbo, with you and Mal, there were no projections?" Concentrating on the pain neither lessens it nor amplifies it, but it makes her all the more aware that it is there and strong.

The patches of the sky passed through shades of magenta and indigo, depending on the cloud cover at certain parts of the horizon. She watched her shadow steadily elongate across the carpet and the carpet darkens into an emerald green that reminded her of grass. Her hands looked like those of ET; she tucked them back into her pockets and fingered her golden bishop which sat snug against the warm cover of the faulty grenade.

_Time is fluid; the night passes too quickly for it to be considered normal. But living so long in Limbo, I can hardly bat an eyelash. _The door to the other Ariadne's makeshift hospital room was open and if she held her breath, she could hear Ariadne's breathing that was painfully slow: in, out, in, out. Arthur's low mutterings of gauze, pressure and rapid cell regeneration broke the light atmosphere. She tapped her fingernails against the walls, imagining that the hollowed sounds were the sounds of drums, of people marching, of projections marching on a determined path to get rid of the foreign body that is plaguing their primary conscience.

"I got too used this place again," Cobb leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, "The first time I ended up here, I remember people slowly appearing from the shadows, people I've seen in passing, people I know, people I cared about. That happened this time again. I got too used to this place and I'm still not entirely whole."

Ariadne made an "oh" sound and bit her lip, turning Cobb's response in her head, examining it from all sides, trying to pick apart the logic. Then she made an "Ooh" sound and grinned, embarrassed.

Despite her proximity to him, she did not expect him to take her hand nor did she expect him to be so friendly as to squeeze it and rub her palm with a single finger in small, hypnotic circles. Drowsiness overcame her alert mentalities and she allowed a small yawn to escape from her and rubbed her eyes with the back of her free hand. She could hear him talking to her miles away, twisted like they were conversing underwater, "We have to go back home to recover. We'll need to find the blueprints to the weapons and formulate a plan." Mentally shaking herself from her daze, she reluctantly pulled her hand away from the sensations and waited for reality to rush back at her with long movement-lines at the speed of an uncontrollable freight train. Out of the corner of her eye, she observed Arthur carrying a limp figure in his arms down a set of stairs. "We'll also need to move quickly since it'll only be a matter of time before my projections get a word of this. I hope we'll be quick enough."

She blinked hazily as him as he gently pulled her to her feet and looked out the broken window: the night was indigo and violet. Arthur turned out the lights; she could only see a silhouette before her. "I want to get up early to watch the sunrise," she declared, feeling childish when she did.

She could hear his grin in his response, "Then we shall."

_Forty-seven. 47_

Exhaustion had set into her so subtly, oozing into the cracks of her shield, that before she knew it, she was so tired that even wiggling her toes was becoming a chore. The TV in the living room was set to ambient music, rises and falls of long strings of notes in a steady rhythm. Ariadne lay on her side, tracing small patterns on the leather couches, noting with a bit of humor that from her perspective, the seat of the couch looks like a looming cliff.

_I realize that after today, it would be nigh impossible to go to sleep._ She twisted her body and pulled at her shirt, looking for a method to her comfortableness, but she felt horrible. The feeling wasn't technically physical but a psychological taint in her stomach that made her feel like she need a shower and a complete mind wipe of her memories of all that had happened at the Penrose Triangle. The Penrose Triangle was wrong; it fought directly against her sense of self. _No, it's Mal that distracts me against my worth. _Ariadne blinked as her inner monologue began drowns out the music that floated over her head. _The Triangle is Mal; Mal is the Triangle. Mal was behind the hold on Cobb's truth and the duplicity behind the paradox._ Rubbing her face, grinding her nose against her palm, she groaned. _ Everything here is so unstable._

_How does it feel to be second hand goods?_ The haunting voice was persistent in this regard, never loud but always on the peripherals and obvious. Wishing it away is useless, especially when it's a part of one's conscience.

She estimated it to be an hour later (but honestly, with how time decide to move in this world, how can anyone tell?) when she heard Cobb rapping twice on the door frame. She waved a hand over the back of the couch, knowing that he would take it as a cue to invite himself in. "Something to end the rough day," he remarked, walking in with two mugs, handing one over to her.

She pulled herself up into a sitting position, shifting her legs to allow him at least half of the sofa, wincing as she touched her bruises. Her limbs were encased in concrete blocks and protesting against any movement but the more she flexed, the more loose she felt. Gratefully accepting the gift, she murmured appreciations and watched him over the rim as she sipped the hot chocolate. Cobb set his on the coffee table and waited patiently for her; she felt her stomach warm pleasantly and exhaled, blowing steam from the surface of the liquid. "Thanks. It really helps."

He leaned his elbow against the back of the couch, facing her, his expression more unreadable than normal, "Will you talk to me now?"

"About what?" She easily replied.

"Don't try to play dumb, Ariadne," he wearily rubbed his face; making her aware of the small amount of guilt pooling in her chest, "Why did you leave me?" She set down her mug and leaned on the back of the leather: they mirrored each other's actions.

"I didn't leave you, Cobb, I…" Ariadne opened her mouth, and when nothing else came out, she closed it and swallowed. "I didn't leave you, I was helping you."

"Without telling me? And then you end up like," he gently holds her hand and inspects it, "this, there's no way that can be true." His eyes were a blue-green: she would say that they were the colors of the sky in reality, but she forgot the shade. "You were running away from me."

"I wasn't!" She insisted. "Your truth was taken by her and I looked for her all through Limbo, everywhere, the buildings, the stores, the streets, nothing! But then the Penrose Triangle, and I got mad at her and we fought and now… Your totem is still…" She looked away and counted to ten, then she turned back and weakly shrugged, "I missed you," she finished awkwardly. She truly meant that: none of his comfortable companionship, none of his witticisms, none of what made him Cobb. "Cobb?" She tilted her head to the side in askance when he didn't let go of her hand when she gently tugged it back.

Their heads were inches apart; she wondered why she didn't notice until now. Cobb sighed and rubbed his temples, observing her as she squirmed under his gaze, "You don't notice, do you?"

_Notice what? _"Notice what?"

"You constantly simultaneously try to keep close and then push farther apart. You don't care about yourself," Cobb placed his hand on her knee, "I should've seen this when you were willing to drop everything to accompany the team onto Fischer's plane and when you pushed into my dreamscape. But you didn't care about yourself, how this would affect your mentality and now, you're with me and you refuse to be close."

"Cobb, I..." Confused, she began to protest, only to have him impatiently cut her off.

"Say my name Ariadne."

His hand had moved from her hand to her cheek, cradling it in warmth, her eyes widened even more. "Cobb?"

"Say my name Ariadne," he replied patiently, his thumb grazing her hairline. His other hand and move up to her hip, pulling her forward till they were nearly aligned. He was so close; she could only stare hypnotized into the depths of his eyes; she could barely think.

"Dom…" She murmured and gasped as a warm, slight pressure was applied to her lips. It took her a few moments to register what was happening and by that time, her other mental facilities that usually process what should be done as a reaction had shut down. She whimpered and fisted the front of his shirt; he made a noise at the back of his throat that she took as approval, "Dominic… Dom."

Somewhere between them, an invisible barrier broke.

_Forty-eight. 48_

The angry mob of protestors began picketing in front of the house the next day early morning. Within half an hour, the commotion turned violent as they started throwing various objects through the windows and started pushing against the door. Garden tools and empty wine bottles were the first objects to make it across the windows. Locking the back door behind her, Ariadne wondered how effective Cobb's subconscious security was from the time that she had first arrived and how well they were at identifying intruders. "Alien! Outsider! Kill the outsider!" Crouching underneath the windows of his house where they heard furniture being overturned and glasses and plates shattering, they squeezed through a gap in the fence and came upon a dark alley. Ariadne glanced at the mob and the emerging sunrise that shined behind them, giving each projection a red-orange halo.

It did not seem fitting.

They ran with the distant echoes of reverberating anger behind them, the actions of the mob were beginning to send minute shakes into the earth. She could feel it with every step she took. Though she wasn't sure how soon or how late, she knew that Limbo was preparing to expel both Cobb and her out of the subconscious, due to a combination of a haunting projection' (i.e. Mal) paradoxes whose malevolence even the regular projections can sense.

They came upon a small gang, maybe five, of projections who wore well pressed suits, ironed into sharp corners and pristine clean, just from the dryers. As a dichotomy, there were in stances reminiscent of gangs of street acrobats in Paris, perched on a trashcan, leaning against the brick wall. _It was almost as if they were guarding something, like security persons…_ The hand she was holding tightened, _Dom's security team. _The closest one, who sported a rather loud pink tie, looked up, grinned, and eased himself into a standing position and ambled over with the grace of a lazy predator. She noted that eyes that were hidden under the busboy cap that he wore, "Mademoiselle, how a pleasure it is too see you," he greeted curtly, "have we met before?"

Ariadne opened her mouth but her answer failed to come out. She closed her mouth and looked at the young teen thoughtfully. _Security team… _"Yes we have," she struggled to keep her voice cool, _I think._ Another man, pudgier with a Mediterranean look on him, peeked cautiously from the leader back. With the shadows covering half of his face, he looked like Yusuf.

_He is Yusuf. _"Hello. I've met you too," she acknowledged.

Yusuf shrugged, "Perhaps we have," _but he wouldn't know _and retreated back into the group after the first man sent him off with a glance.

Yusuf exchanged some words with his peers. The group parted and allowed access straight through the alleyway. Wordlessly, Dom took the lead; it was a mockery of Moses parting the Red Sea. "But," the leader murmured, low enough to be heard only by her and Dom, and grinned, adjusting his cap, "if we haven't met before here but have _out there_, and you are what we suspect you are. You shouldn't tell anyone here but me and Yusuf. You make everything so bloody difficult, you little femme fatale." Taking off his cap to run a hand through his hair, he tossed a careless glance at Dom and for a split moment, his eyes flashed blue.

They were Eames' eyes.

"Just in case," the projection smiled Eames' smile, "The word is out to the selected few. Darling waits at fourteen-thirteen Sheridan in the hall behind the bar." He stepped back into the shadows with the rest of the gang and the entire group faded into the walls, "You would know where that is."


	9. 49 to 52

Author's Note: LAST FULL LENGTH CHAPTER. Then a one page epilogue (since I want to make this story ten chapters long. Yes, I am OC about that). Also I'm not an expert on weaponry. Warning: Strange pop culture references.

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Forty-nine. 49_

"Only shoot when you breathe out, it's when you are least likely to have muscle spasms. In the military, professional snipers are able to consciously slow their heartbeats down and enter a state of complete relaxation, of meditation if you will, where they time their shots in between their heartbeats for maximum accuracy. You, Ariadne, do not have to worry about that." Arthur Darling flips the gun expertly, twirling it from one hand to another in such a showman ship that it didn't look like he was inspecting the weapon for abnormalities as much as putting on an acrobat juggling performance. With a "huh" sound that Ariadne took as approval for the quality of gun that Cobb had produced, he made a gesture that indicated that he was about to pass the Beretta onto her. But then he drew back, having spotted the grenade dud peeking out from her jacket. "Are you sure that thing won't blow at the most inconvenient time?"

Grabbing the gun, Ariadne gave him a dirty look, "It'll go off when I want it to go off. It's mine now." She stared at the Beretta and its seducing, dark design, as deadly as romantic and making sure that it was chambered but not loaded, she hooked it on her belt and self-consciously fingered the small egg-shaped bomb hanging from her neck.

Making a noise at the back of his throat, Arthur shrugged, "It's however you wish to make it. See what I have?" He pulled out his own pistol, "A Glock is not that different from a Beretta or any other gun, really. You know how to load the gun and you're semi-decent at handling the recoil so just remember, when you shoot, have your arm parallel-." He was interrupted by Dom's call, demands that they meet him in the conference room of the building. The Point Man's eyes flickered in the direction of the voice and said neutrally, "That's my maker, let's go."

For an architect, Dominic Cobb's ideas were more warfare-like in nature and involved more field tactics than would be normal for a run-of-the-mill designer. _Then again, we are preparing for battle_. Ariadne thought dryly, the lump in her throat as heavy as the leaden weight of her new gun. The plans were drawn half-hazard with a noted lack of a straight-edge, though the lines were crisp and clean for a human hand. The main strategy encompassed at least three stories of the building; back-ups and fall-backs included another five. "I've accounted for the extra helping hands we will be getting from Eames and Yusuf who will be meeting us at the back entrance of the Penrose Triangle." Dom stared down at the rolled out posters before him, alternating between tapping his pen on the desk and tapping his foot on the ground, "I think we've covered most of our bases," he announced finally, "They're flexible enough to still adjust to any extenuating circumstances. If I do anymore, it would be a never-ending cycle of plan and rehash."

Attempting to think of any holes that might be apparent in the scenarios Ariadne ventured, "So you mean to say that if _she _decides to change our expectations and bring, let's say an element as monumental as…"

"The train." Arthur helpfully supplied, the corners of his mouth twitching, "these plans will be ready." Ariadne glanced sideways at the projection that Dom and she shared who had seemed to along the way pick up on her odd humor. "Then again, she wouldn't dare to do that," the Point Man continued, ignoring Cobb's scowl, "since you have confirmed to us many times that the goal of this expedition is to either kill Mal or destroy the Penrose Triangle. Bringing the train here will decimate the building."

"Astute, but the train isn't hers," he responded with assurance, "but it isn't mine either. I don't know why it's still here." The lamps above them dully buzzed, swinging from the wind given by the fan that was sitting on the table. "It shouldn't pose a problem," he finished. Arthur raised an eyebrow, clearly not impressed. Dom made a small note in the corner of the posters that printed: _small dangers only_. "I don't really have a clue as to what she's planning. From what I could observe, she's a lone wolf but I might be wrong."

Nibbling on her bottom lip in habit, she stared at the numerous lines, erased and redrawn, the hastily scribbled numbers and the arrows of the small dots that were representing people. _Best laid plans always fail. Let's hope that it fails in our favor. _"You might," Ariadne conceded, "She might be determined enough to find an alliance. But," her brow furrowed, "Who would that be?"

"Is there something else she can turn to?" Arthur asked, squinting in concentration as he adjusted the desk lamp's position over the table and the posters.

Squeaky shoes scuffed on the floor and fingers tapped on the table. "Maybe my security team, at this point they are also acting independently. They will be easy to get rid of since they share a conscious mind between them, the bigger the group, the dumber the individuals." Cobb pointed with his pen at specific ends of the corridors, "Penrose stairs are the easiest way to deal with them, as Arthur can attest. You have to watch out and know which floor you exit out of though, it's easy to lose your sense of height. Also, don't underestimate them, even though they are quite dumb, they are trained in guerrilla warfare and capture. They run on automatic purpose and the moral fiber shared between them is small." Cobb replied grimly and turned towards her, "their goal is to get rid of you; they had labeled you as the Intruder. Fair warning."

"I'll be fine," she hurriedly reassured him. _Really. _He didn't look too convinced.

"I suppose," he murmured hesitantly and cleared his throat, scrounging up an unsure smile that was pained and self-conflicting. _But he has to at least share a modicum of confidence in me. …Please trust me. _ He rolled up the blueprints as an act of finality and bounded them. "You will be." He spoke with more conviction to reassure himself, "I believe in you."

_Fifty. 50_

The walk there was tense on ominously empty streets that spoke with them in the language of wind rushing between the canyons of buildings. "Just breathe, darling," Eames had said cheerfully, "That's the whole secret to staying alive and be thankful that we haven't stumbled upon other projections." Ariadne couldn't tell whether he was speaking to her or Arthur but she didn't have the heart to make a smart-aleck rebuttal. It was either evening or dawn; impossible to tell as the sun was as likely to rise in the north and set in the east as it was to make whimsical laps around the sky.

The doors of the Penrose Triangle, tall and forbearing as they rested on concrete grounds, were invitingly unlocked and beckoned with invisible arms. If possible, the atmosphere grew tense. "Do not speak, do not say a word," Cobb had reiterated before they had set out from their headquarters, looking at each member in the eye. She followed her familiar footprints in the age-old dust up a beaten path to the stairs, seeing a transparent echo of herself days prior wandering around the building, looking for her projection and the totem. Every foot was placed softly after the other and with every movement, shadows extended and shrunk to no specific rhythm; she loaded her gun with a click, holding it in front pointing downwards just like Arthur had showed her. There were desks, chairs, and the broken windows, the portraits on the walls, the lamps, the doors and emergency exits; barriers, obstacles, bullet cover, escape. It felt different from the last time she was here.

If she had to place a color to the charged atmosphere the last time she was there, she would call it red, now it was a green. A sort of green that one could only stare at for a couple of seconds before glancing away, blinking, trying to erase the afterimages of the color from one's vision. The place reeked. _Urgh, the stench. _She wrinkled her nose. _What would I give for a haz-mat suit or breathing mask?_

She stood with her back against the wall, easing into the hall step by step, ducking under the large windows. Her muscles were coiled and trigger-happy; she caught herself holding her breath for unhealthy extended periods of time, scared that her own lungs were making too much noise for the scene. The men were behind her so at least there were no worries about any surprise bullet to her spine, which only leaves three… two vulnerable sides.

In any blank space, there was Mal. Mal's eyes were everywhere, above them, below them, directly in front, watching their backs. Mal was the Triangle with the full intent of killing her so omnipotent and hostile that goose-bumps danced across her skin in small waves every time she so much as moved. _Redrum. Redrum. _The morbid mind supplied.

…_not funny._

The first bullet made her jump; its trajectory soared near and missed by a couple centimeters south of her jawline. More bullets shot by, she could feel the little bullet-whiplashes that they gave to the air but miraculously, most had missed and one tore out a fair bit of her hair. Flinging her body behind a computer chair, she aimed her gun through the cracks and fired a couple rounds, immediately coughing from the dust and wood bits that clogged the air and blocked her vision as she fanned the air to push aside the drifting debris.

She spotted Mal hiding behind a pillar on the far side with small number of people behind her dressed in pressed suits and sunglasses, like they came from the Matrix, like stoic penguins who knew how to handle firearms. _Dom was right; his projections did team up with mine_. Still coughing into a hand, she stuck her gun through the previously made hole and pulled the trigger. And reloaded, aimed, and pulled again. And again. And again…

Somewhere down the line, she realized that she was unable to kill, she couldn't bring herself to kill, she could maim, and she could harm and injure, but never kill. _This could be a problem. _But in the fury of battle, even that thought was pushed to the back corner of her mind; there wasn't even time to chance and look back to see how the others were faring. _Shoot. Reload. Aim. Shoot. Duck. Crawl. _As her mind began to cloud and degenerated into single worded thoughts, her mind drifted to the memory of Dom's commanding voice, "Fight off your tunnel vision, use common sense. It's inevitable that it'll come, but what's important is that you resist it as long as possible. Everyone will get it, but it's how you deal." _How many people were there? Who was taking the left wall? Who was advancing? Who was running out of bullets? _Every sound entering her ears was muted; even the bullet that pierced through her wooden barrier seemed to be moving slower than usual. _How many bullets did she have left? …Aim… Shoot… Reload… Aim… Click. "_It could mean the difference between life and death." _Click… Click… Click… Fuck_.

Her heart gave thudded, wet heartbeats as she watched dispassionately as Yusuf made a desperate wave with his gun at her, shouting something. She made a motion at her own Beretta and opened her empty hands, palms up; she couldn't even hear what was coming out of her mouth.

Yusuf slid a cartridge towards her. She pushed off the wall and scooted forwards behind a sturdy wooden desk and reloaded. The lamp above shattered, spraying her with broken blue shards, causing her to give an undignified yelp in surprise. _Breathing in means tasting wood bits and dust._ Shaking her head, she peeked over with the gun cocked and ready, closing one eye for better aim. _Stick to the plan, dammit. Achieve the impossible, dammit. _

It was fairly obvious that the opposition's crude plan was 'divide and conquer' which was reasonable on their front seeing that they outnumbered them two to one. _Kill a part of yourself, dammit._

Between the quick flinches at every gun shot, between running between tables and over shattered porcelain, between the quick motions of the head over and under the table from her vantage point, she was aware that she was getting corralled off from the rest of the group. She couldn't tell who called her, "Ariadne!" Cobb and the others were engrossed in their own battles and someone had only noticed when it was too late to backtrack. Ariadne grimaced as she kept up the cloud of fire to cover herself. _Well played, Mal, well played._

The woman in question, the she-devil in red, was waving two handguns around, yelling, "Where is she? Tell me where is she!" _Cobb's totem? She was probably hidden in the underground depths of some safe house that sported five feet thick walls of concrete, which was precisely how it's supposed to be. _Ariadne coolly observed from her vantage point. Mal spotted her and fired twice in her direction, but she was too far to land a hit. _Or she can be hidden in this very building, hidden right under your nose. Or she can be hidden 2D picture from a trompe l'oeil style where she can't be killed. But you wouldn't know because I don't know. You know only what I know. _Arthur had already established the rules of essential survival in this mission. Rule number one: _Mal doesn't know_.

Reading her thoughts, Mal screamed in frustration and exited to the left in a flurry of pristine chiffon and satin. _Who's following the objective? _Two of the enemies were down and out; her teammates were concentrating on the rest. Cursing and seeing no alternatives, Ariadne crawled and leaped toward the door in pursuit, doggedly trailing after the sounds of clicking heels up to the next flight of stairs and into the hallway and was met with block cubist shadows and every shade of grey under the sky. No movement. She stood there, a statue, one who can blend unreasonably well with the walls. _Nothing… Where did she- Seeing_ a flash of red in the corner of her eye, she spun on her heels and ran.

She could hear the sounds of her own padded steps, of her heavy breathing, the thuds of the grenade knocking against her chest. Indiscernible objects passed her multiple times like noir movies; she was running through a picture of a fractal in negative. The corridor was long and skewed with her depth perception; it reminded her of the Victorian style asylums that were once prevalent in England only without the haunted screams and the peeling paint chips from the ledges under the windows. _They use to call it the Alice Syndrome. Psychology 101._

Then the faint, assured clicking of heels stopped; Ariadne stopped and looked around, tilting her head towards the path before her, gauging any clue that might provide assistance. There were repetitive sounds of a weight being brought to the ground in the distance, coming ever so closer. _Those aren't Mal's footsteps, hell; no running woman would sound like that._ _Whoever they are, there are two of them, coming fast. _Without contemplating it for too long, Ariadne wretched open the closest door, _stairs¸_ and began descending. Her mind painted of small moving frame of Mal ordering two bodyguards around, her finger extended as she stood imposingly over the two frames like a mistress to her dogs, "Fetch."

She got to the lower level, partly hiding behind the stairs, and waited with the Berreta ready. _Don't miss; these walls ricochet and you don't want to know where the bullet will bounce to if you miss. _The moment the door swung open again, she aimed and fired. She was too close to miss and the projection collapsed in a boneless heap, clutching at his thigh. She shot him again for good measure. The door swung open again; she quickly ducked but Cobb's security projection spotted her. Running down the stairs, taking two at a time, she heard her pursuer keeping close behind her, "Arretez!"

She stopped, digging her heels into the ground and pushed her body against the wall. Not expecting her to actually stop, the man rushed past her and off the sudden ledge, screaming as he fell, his voice echoing strangely as he disappeared. Wiping her palms against her pants, Ariadne stared down disbelievingly, "I…" she said slowly, "Can't believe that worked." She licked her lips and grinned, "Paradox." _That means I should be on the floor I started on. _She looked behind her. _Yep, door numbers don't lie. _She opened the door and had one foot over-

And froze when she felt something metal and cold pressing against the side of her head. "Don't move," Mal breathed out, "Don't move until I resolve our differences in any way that I see fit."

_Like hell. _Ariadne viciously elbowed Mal's stomach. For her troubles, the gun went off.

The gun went off the moment Ariadne felt a force shoving her to the ground, displacing air out of her lungs, causing her to slide back a couple of meters and hitting the far wall. Nonplussed, she scrambled to her feet and ignored the protesting muscles which were sure to reward her with a bruise when this is all over.

She watched, stunned, as a mysterious force tackled Mal from the side. It was impossible to tell what the invisible force, or push, or person was and she couldn't think of anybody at the top of her head with 'invisibility powers.' But it seemed like Mal recognized who the invisible being was, seeing how she was struggling with the air, her wrists were held at shoulder level as she pushed and pulled, snarling and screaming, "You're back? You're dead!" Slowly standing up, Ariadne took a moment to look away and then look back at the scene to make sure that she wasn't hallucinating. "I'll kill you! This time, you don't have to worry about the jumps!"

Ariadne welcomed the distraction with open arms and wasn't about to let it go to waste. She aimed her gun at the woman, and stared at it incredulously when all she got was a feeble click; there were no bullets. _Again? _She picked up Mal's gun…. _Empty too. _She growled in frustration, _back to the catfights. _Rolling her sleeves and flexing her fingers, she lunged at her projection with a snarl.

There was a tangle of hair and tattered clothing; fingers turned into claws, heels were deadly. She ducked under a swipe; Mal's shrieks were loud and piercing but too much blood was pumping into her ears for her to give it much mind. Her world had been muted since the first bullet whipped past her. _How long has it been since? _The sudden burst of strength in her proved useful. A punch clipped her at the jaw, giving her a whiplash, she tasted copper and iron, but it didn't deter her from using her shoes to dig into the other's knees, her back slammed against the wood of a short bookcase. Her fingers curled around the projection's neck and she squeezed and knocked the head into a lamp. _Stunned_. Using the lamp, Ariadne started hitting the other on the head, _one… two…_

But she stopped as she was starting to experience her own searing pain at the top of her head. On Mal's once pristine gown were droplets of blood: they were her own. She tentatively touched her head and easily pulled out a clump of blood matted hair, sticky between her fingers. It was as if her own brain was rattling in her own skull. It was as if she was the one receiving the blows.

"Mamam says that the connection between person and projection is strong. You have to break it…" James had said a long, long, time ago.

"Do you realize?" Ariadne whispered to the unresponsive visage, grabbing the chin and puckering the cheeks, "I can't kill you; I have to break the connection. I'm killing both of us, and yet…" The other's eyes were dulled glass and unresponsive, "If I'm still here and you're not, it means that I'm stronger part of myself," Ariadne wondered where Mal mentally went, in her little projection mindscape? Did she abandon her body? She started when James' voice was heard singing a familiar tune.

_Alouette, gentille Alouette… Alouette, je te plumerai. _Ariadne blew a strand of hair out of her face and watched it fall back down to its original position, "What is this even supposed to mean?" She asked despairingly to nobody in particular, applying pressure to her temples, wincing when she touched a tender spot. _… Je te plumerai la tete, je te plumerai la tete. _She slapped the remains of the lamp into her palm and stared at Mal's blank face (_definitely not there) _and raised it once again over her head for good measure and brought it down. _The final blow is given with the intent to shatter you, you won't be gone, but it should buy me some time. _Welcoming the sharp pain, she fell, careful to avoid falling onto her projection.

_Once upon a time there was a princess named Ariadne who lived in the kingdom of Crete, who fell in love with the visiting hero Theseus, who sought to help Theseus on his quest to navigate through the Labyrinths holding the Minotaur with promises that she would be his bride, who was abandoned on the island of Naxos for Theseus loved another._

_Fifty-one. 51_

She wakes up to the sound of a thousand footsteps and instinctively crawls underneath a computer desk to lick her wounds and take inventory. The longer she huddled under, the slower her heart beat until she could properly think over the pounding in the chest, a feat in itself considering the massive blows she gave herself to the back of her head, concussion was a certainty. For the life of her, she can't remember when, but a bullet had found its way into her upper arm; it didn't hurt. _Mal is gone; she can be anywhere._ Ariadne despaired as she worked on keeping her breathing shallow and silent.

There are hammering footsteps in the corridor akin to war drums and the hounds, in the midst of battle, there are robots that all share the same heartbeats and wear the same shoes. _Already? Can't I take a break? _Entire body sore, she draws her knees to her chest and muffles a groan as her muscles stretched. _I'm willing to bet that they're the security personnel; they want to find me; they want to kill me. _She dared to peek out of her hiding place just as the door opens and presses her back against the inside of the desk. _They're masses of penguins, black and white, uniformed from top to bottom, blank faces, unspeaking. They move with a purpose and if they all file into the room, I'll be trapped. …It doesn't look like they have guns on them and with these walls the bullets will ricochet just like in the stairwells, they're all carrying batons. _The implications sunk into her stomach and caused it to spin; she wants to vomit.

Darting from under the temporary haven, she sprints to the opposite door, looking back once. "That's her. Let's go!" They snarled, blank faces twisting into inhumane hate, "Take the foreigner!" The rhythmic gait broke into long footfalls of running and each man roared, the sound culminated and shook the windows and her bones, "kill the intruder!" _At least they aren't whipping out firearms._

She grabs the doorknob and frantically shakes it, "Come on, come on, come on… " A click, "yes" she breaths out and wretches the door open and slams it behind her, pushing her whole body against it, feeling the force of a thousand projections bearing down on the other side as she struggled to lock it… click_. _Wiping her hands on her pants, she glances back to assess the room that she entered and mutters, "Dead end."

_But_, her mind supplied as her eyes were invariably pulled to the windows, _there is a way._

The brass flower paperweight shattered the ceiling high windows into little rainbow, tinted pieces, flashing as they reflected the sunlight perfectly. Pushing through the sea of chairs and desks with piles of papers, she makes her way over, glass crunching underneath her feet, takes a deep breath, and steps out. With the forty-five degree angling window panes stable with her weight, she takes a while to orient herself. The streets of Limbo were on her left, the cloudy sky on her right, the neighboring penthouse was directly above her. She lifts a foot, inspects it, and brings it down, marveling, _the center of gravity is the paradox. I'm not sure how I feel about that. _Then three things happened at once: the door to the office slammed open, she breaks into a run, and the world of Limbo begins to tremble. "She's outside!"

She turns and leaps to another side of the Penrose Triangle and ends up horizontally parallel to the ground but she takes it at face value and continues to sprint towards the ground floors, turning at another side of the Triangle and leaping again. When she lands and straightens, her body is at an angle with her head slanting downwards; blood should be rushing to her head. Her legs were tired of having their protests ignored and were redoubling their efforts with a vengeance; it felt as if her choice of fuel was battery acid. _Mind over matter: be Zen in your pain: it does not truly exist. _The penguins follow her; how their combined weight keeps them above the glass panes as they tread, she has no idea but it spells bad news for her. The glass begins to vibrate; they're getting closer and as they get closer, they get more silent in their pursuit, deadly professional with a single-minded determination to exterminate her with their batons and bare hands. _With so many death threats on my person in such short time, I have no time to even begin processing the value of my life and panic_, she mused as she judge the distance between where vantage point and the ground above her, leaps, lands, rolls, and runs.

A thin shadow was stretched before her, the contrast augmented by the setting sun and when she looks up and squints into the orange light, she can confidently say that she's not surprised to who it was. Ariadne slowly skids to a halt, arms loosely beside her but ready as she waits for the newcomer's next move. She can hear the crowd advancing, taking slower as slower steps as they realized that she had nowhere else to go. Mal idly tosses and spins her baton, identical to the one the penguins have behind her, as if bored with this game of cat-and-mouse, "I've been pondering upon the meaningful existence of a preternatural eidolon. They don't seem to have a place in this world." Ariadne raises both eyebrows but doesn't reply; Mal seemed to be talking to herself. She raises the baton, the crowd behind Ariadne stops and waits with baited breath for the projection's next orders. "Not many people have a place in this world; not you, not I."

_She intends to kill me, regardless that it'll destroy her own existence since her existence is powered by the will to eradicate me. _Ariadne glanced back and saw penguins with sticks_. It would seem hopeless wouldn't it? _Her legs were shaking erratically from the strain she had them endure, _I'm sorry legs, and I'll make it up to you somehow. You did a good job until now, where I'll have to figure out how to escape, even though I'm surrounded on all sides. It's impossible to fight through a crowd, so the remaining path would be at Mal. _She chuckled; _it would seem hopeless wouldn't it?_

_Not really. _Clasping the grenade hanging from her neck, Ariadne unhooks it slowly and begins tossing it up and down to the same rhythm that Mal was tossing her baton. _There's still one last chance, one crazy, insane, last resort. What do you think, Mal, my projection? _ Cobb's projections weren't moving, they have no idea what's about to happen. For a moment, she almost feels sorry for them.

Mal narrows her eyes and hissed, "You wouldn't dare."

Ariadne smiles tight-lipped, wide and bland, eyes half-lidded. _Do you know what I would dare to do anymore? The more you can't predict my movements, the more I wander from my former self, the more we are disconnected. You say I wouldn't dare. Or would I?_

Spinning around, Ariadne lobs it back into the mob and, without watching its trajectory, dashes towards Mal with such a surprising burst of speed that the projection didn't have time to scream. She jumps just as it explodes, allowing the shockwave to throw her back into the building; she takes Mal with her as the Penrose triangle shakes to its foundations. She hears the glass shatter like little musical notes, spoons hitting on half-filled wine glasses, and the impact knocks her out of breath, but Mal absorbed most of the shock as Ariadne had kept her projection underneath her and though some of the pain was transferred to Ariadne, she felt that she was better off. The smoke had managed to enter the new room that they were in and kept it suffocating and hazy. There were scorch marks on the walls by the broken windows from where she entered and there was no sign of Cobb's security men save for scraps of black cloth and some batons rolling their way. Ariadne turned back to her charge, pinning both of her wrists to the ground, using her legs to further hinder the other's movement and struggles. Chest heaving (and still unable to believe that she came out of it relatively unscathed) Ariadne took a moment to examine her projection. At first glance, anybody would make a comparison that she was the deceased Mrs. Cobb, but further in depth study reveals that this Mal contained minute differences: Ariadne's eyes, facial expressions, posture, methods of speech, they were all hers. _Let's talk, heart to heart. _Mal's struggles increased two-fold but Ariadne pushed down harder until the other gasped. _Don't be difficult; recognize who is in power._ Mal narrowed her eyes, causing Ariadne to dimly wonder how much of her thoughts can her projection discern and whether those thoughts are actual sentences or the feelings associated with words.

"If I have the strength to throw a grenade; I have the strength to be strong," she reasoned, tasting her own blood. "If you didn't know that I can use the grenade, then you know me less and less. I'm a different person than who I was prior to Limbo, I endured your attacks and I changed for it, for the better. Do you realize? Soon you're going to be an individual, as a rule, I can't allow that to happen."

"You won't be able to," Mal declared, faltering on only the last word.

Ariadne squarely met her gaze and dryly pointed out, "You're drawing on biased conclusions again. I've changed since entering the Penrose Triangle and, if you didn't notice, I'm still changing." Scratching the back of her head, Ariadne laughs, "It'll take time to regain any confident sense of self, it's a long process, I'll admit but I'm on the right path, so that's reassuring, hmm? When I am determined to accomplish my goals, I reach: far, far out until I don't know what I'm touching." Mal stares at her with a blank expression. Ariadne blinks and smiles, "We have one last connection I need to break. As of now, I know where you are hiding the totem, as an object and not the person. I know because you know and I know how to get it."

Ariadne dimly wonders about the sudden power she has in Limbo, _is it due to a sudden influx of my will and of confidence and of self-esteem: this power of knowing what going to happen, of knowing what to do to make something happen. I can equate the feeling when a dreamer suddenly is hit with the fact that they're dreaming and that in the dreamscape, they can achieve lucid dreaming, and control their surroundings. I know the hows but I don't know the whys._ But she can care less to reason, it doesn't exist here. _I can be grateful, but I won't dwell on the schematics. I'm ok but I feel horrible; I'm just tired of running._

Ariadne casually glances around: the room, unlike the one that she had just left this one was bare; every inch of the wall was visible. The smoke from the explosion had started to clear and she could see the individual levels of smog in the air as they start to settle and blow. _I wonder what floor I'm on: the first or second? Though, would it matter- seeing that in a Penrose Triangle, the buildings shift according to paradox._

_I have to cleave the last connection. Mal said that I won't be able to…_

"What is the most resilient parasite?" Cobb had said when she first arrived on the shores of Limbo, the sun beating down on their backs, sands finding any crack into their shoes, "Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood," Cobb had winked and placed a finger to his temple, "that sticks; right in there, somewhere."

_Inception, that's it, I have to do it again, but this time it'll be on myself. _ _Self-Inception: it has a strange ring to it doesn't it? _She takes both of Mal's wrists in one hand and uses the other free one to caress her visage, starting from the fore head, to the cheek bones, finishing at the chin. _This is me. It must be a taboo idea to dissociate from one self, it might hurt, and it might bring side-effects. I wonder though if I can…_

_We end this. _Ariadne leaned closer until their faces, dreamer and projection, were only inches away, until the only things either could see were each other's eyes, "You are waiting for a train. A train that will take you far, far, away." Mal's eyes widened, Ariadne further lowered her head until she was whispering into her projection's ears, "You know where you hope this train will take you."

"No! No! No! Stop it!" _She was a part of me, she was me. Where did it all go wrong? Why did you hate me so much? How can you? _"The train can't be yours!" Struggling to contain the body, Ariadne was shaking from the effort, she tasted salt. _I'm crying for her. For what it's worth, I'm sorry._

"But you can't know for sure." As she felt the floors tremble, heard the glass shards dancing along the tile floors, Ariadne swallowed and breathed out, "Yet it doesn't matter."

"It can't be yours! Please! Please!" Mal cried. _From a confident enemy, she is suddenly reduced to a lesser person without me. A person's true self is always revealed in the last moments before her death. _"No! Please!"

"Because in the end." Ariadne abruptly lets go of her projection, straightens, and steps back. Freed, Mal scrambles back and stares at her, but she doesn't try to retaliate. _How was I ever frightened of her? How was I ever frightened of myself? _She could hear the distant roar of something memorable, the windows began to rattle; she felt thunder. Neither of them moved for they already knew that the war over self was over, there was a clear winner and looser and for a split second, they look eye to eye, a common understanding between them. _Because in the end._

She doesn't flinch when the thunder comes at a height or when the freight train hurls through the walls of the Penrose Triangle, splitting it and it's foundations in half, or when the train roars past her, a mere meter away, whipping her hair violently to the side. But she screams when all of her memories rush by, carried away with the train, and as she struggles to catch and contain them, her pain grows unbearable.

She contains and acknowledges the Mal-ness within her.

_We'll always be together._

_Fifty-two. 52_

She lifts her head a couple inches above the ground, feeling the invisible axe split her head in half. Her groan reverberates in the chamber as did her coughing fit a moment later; she rests her cheek against the tile floor and smears it with her blood. She tastes dust and remains of buildings. Silence bears down mercilessly and she closes her eyes to alleviate the pressure, intending to rest for a few minutes and allows her body to completely slack. A door behind her creaks open ajar and a breeze drifts into the room. "…Dom?" She whispers hoarsely.

There was another body in the room but when she squints, she squints into nothing-ness. She let her head fall back as she can sense this force looking straight down on her; she sees the air ripple. "…Mal?" She called hesitantly, lifting up a limp arm into the air. Not her Mal, but Cobb's Mal. An invisible hand pulled her, stumbling to her feet, she was stabilized against a warm body. Looking ahead, she can see her reflection in the window, and she can see Mal smiling gently. _It's not my smile._

Alarms were sounding in the distance. After a meek sputter, the sprinkler systems fully activated; within seconds, she was soaked to the bone. Raising her head, she laughs hoarsely until her stomach can't take the pain and she coughs some more.

She trudges through the destruction and spots the pewter top sitting innocently along the train tracks, between large and small pieces of rubble, bends down, and picks it up. She examines it, clean, unbeaten, looking the exact same as she had last seen it, and spins it: it keeps spinning. She takes out her golden bishop piece and places it on the group, she pushes it: it falls the wrong way.

She sneezes.


	10. 53 to 54

Author's Note: DONE. Thank you for the reviews and special thanks for those who have been with me since the first chapter of this story! I don't own Inception.

Summary: Post-movie. It's over. Dom Cobb didn't wake up. Ariadne prepares for the challenge to bring him back out, seeing that she is the only one who can. In Limbo, she finds the many faces of Dom Cobb and the many faces of herself. Cobb/Ariadne.

xwx.

_Fifty-three. 53_

He climbs over the debris with his gun ready, kicking glass and wall rubbish aside with his boots. Behind him, Eames gracelessly spits out a glob of blood to the side and Arthur and Yusuf angrily hisses at him; Cobb isn't sure why, manners aren't quite the priority right now. The building shudders angrily; following that, the entire world of Limbo shakes, causing the buildings outside to tremble. "Ariadne?" Dom Cobb yelled out after making sure that there was nobody in the building besides his team; there shouldn't be anybody. For all intents and purposes, it seemed like Ariadne found his totem; he could feel it.

"Cobb," Eames approached, "maybe she's on the second floor, or the third or fourth or higher; goodness knows that we each had gone on a wild goose chase with Mal's men over the entire complex." A fluorescent lamp, hanging by a single cord, fell to the ground and shattered. Dom paused as he considered the advice and wordlessly shook his head and pointed at the train tracks. "Right, of course, follow the yellow brick road, how idiotic of me to think otherwise."

Dom side-glanced at his partner before turning back, "Ariadne!" Sometimes, the only way to tolerate Eames was to pretend that Eames wasn't there.

He spotted the woman in a torrential downpour given by the sprinklers looking like a soaked, miffed cat; the sprinklers chose that time to run out of water, just as he was about to enter the floor. How unlucky of her that chance had chosen that of all the waterlines in other parts of the building to fail to save the one Ariadne was in. How long had she been like that? She must be cold. "Ariadne!"

The woman looked up and smiled and it was a different smile than what he has ever seen before. Despite her many injuries, she stood proudly; she was more real. She had changed for the better, for herself; she's stronger. He loved her more for it_. What had happened between her and Mal?_ He took her arms and gave her a once over: grazed bullet wounds, some that she is probably not aware of, with the adrenalin in her, glass cuts, bruises- the whole spectrum. _What happened?_ But he didn't dare ask. "Here," she pried one of his hands off of her and tucked something into his palm: his pewter spinning top, Mal's totem, "I think it might be useful." Cobb felt a rush of clearness to his head, fuller than he had ever felt before, and he looked up. Arthur, Eames, and Yusuf had vanished; there was no proof that the trio had been here save for their foot prints. But if he listens closely, he can hear Eames cracking a lewd joke, Arthur berating him, and Yusuf laughing uproariously.

As Limbo's skies rattles he sees blue lightning stretching across the sky that doesn't go away- there's a crack in this world; the Triangle begins to shake. Windows that weren't already thoroughly shattered begins to tremble and fall. "This place is about to break," Cobb pulls Ariadne closer, "the whole world is collapsing without you or me holding it up."

They exchange a meaningful look; Dom cups her face and kisses her deeply, then he settles contently with his arms around her and his chin resting on her shoulder. She sighs into the embrace and enjoys it for a little while. Then Ariadne says, "Dom, I want to go home."

Dominic Cobb pulls back, stares into her eyes which were tired but happy, and nods. He gently guides her to the windows until they were toeing the ledge knocking small debris off the edge and down below. It'll be a long jump and a pretty harsh kick, but that's what they were going for. "You first, I'll follow you." Limbo rumbles again, he can see the sea rushing in and swallowing the closest, unfortunate row of skyscrapers and he can hear the buildings fall, like glaciers calving. The crack in the sky splits the world and grows black; Ariadne takes a few seconds to stare up in awe.

Ariadne looks over her shoulder, her hair whipping to the side, casting strange shadows on her face, "To take a leap of faith."

"Trust me," Dom insists.

Ariadne scrutinizes him for a minute, searching him for something. Then she was sleepily smiling and pecking him at the corner of his mouth, "I love you."

She jumps.

After watching her leave and making sure that she disappears, he turns back to the room and stares at the ghost of his wife and his children, which he can see clear as day. "This is it then," he started awkwardly; "I tried to make it better for all of you. I could never have expected this happening, but it has regardless." He turned to his wife, his Mal, not Ariadne's, "especially not you, it was a surprise, a good surprise but a short one. And… What I mean to say is- goodbye."

His children, his dear angels, waves enthusiastically at him but don't shift an inch from their mother's side. Mal holds each one by a shoulder and nods, her voice, unhindered by blinding hate, was loving and tender with a hint of a French accent between her consonants, "She's a bright girl. She shines." Mal and the kids fade against the ruins behind, "Make sure that she doesn't lose herself."

Cobb shakes his head and laughs. He leans back and falls.

He opens his eyes.

_Fifty-four. 54_

_Epilogue_

"Hold up, I see his eyes twitching. They're both stirring." The first thing Cobb saw was Yusuf's forehead, not the first thing one wants to see after spending another lifetime in dream. Yusuf looked up, "Oh look, he's awake. Eames, get the water." Cobb took out his pewter top and spun it on the coffee table: his totem immediately lost balance and stopped rolling. He breathed out and relaxed his pose. The chemist began wiping his face with a hand towel and rinsed it, and then he handed it to Cobb who used it to cool the back of his neck. "Good afternoon Mr. Cobb. You were down there for an awfully long time, had another nice life, did you?"

Cobb grunted in thanks when Eames handed him a glass of water, which he quickly downed half, "Get stuffed." He gently nudged Ariadne with his arm; she had been stirring and struggling to wake up for the past minute. When she cracked her eyes open, he offered her the glass, which she stared at incomprehensively before groaning, sinking deeper down.

"Lemme sleep." She muttered groggily and waved a hand at the offending glass as if shooing it away. Yusuf snickered, though it was tinted with a bit of hysterical emotion around the edges. Another wave of passengers walked by the VIP lounge, another plane had landed. The intercom asked for a Mr. Saito to come to the Customs desk, though Mr. Saito didn't pay it any head.

"Give her a bit of space, it's a lot to take in," Eames said, lounging on the couch opposite of the room.

"You should drink some, Ariadne," Yusuf chided, tilting the cup to her mouth; she drank obediently, "dehydration and dry mouth is a side effect for the concoction and none of us would want your pretty little head suffering from a hangover." Yusuf turned towards Cobb, raised his eyebrows knowingly when he saw the man's hand rubbing soothing circles into her back; he lowered his voice so that she wouldn't hear, "Arthur's coming back with blankets but do try to remember that we still have to pick up our luggage. Whatever you've done down there, though it's none of my business, she," he nodded towards her, "won't remember most of it. It's because of the drug. She'll get small pieces of it, emotions, and feelings, like when an amateur dreamer tries to remember. Some will come to her later in seconds, days, years, possibly never. But," he shot Cobb a look, "I'm sure you recall everything, since you've been in Limbo before…" _with the late Mrs. Cobb. _"…Oh, look, there's Arthur."

Ariadne didn't speak at all; she groped for her back pockets, bringing out a small golden bishop piece. Yawning, she poked it: it fell. Then, without taking the totem back, she slumped back into Dom's shoulder and dozed off for another ten minutes until the group felt that she was ready to pass Immigration on her own two feet.

They walked through the airport, pretending that they were all strangers, where Cobb kept a close eye on Ariadne's back. She held up surprisingly well, all things considered, though it was obvious that she was still in a haze and unaware of anything beyond her immediate external stimuli. He wondered how much she remembered, of all their years together, for all that they have worked through to finally achieve that common goal. _Make sure that she doesn't lose herself_. He will; just as soon as Robert Fischer isn't around to be suspicious.

It was only at the Baggage Claim, Carrel four, as they were waiting, that Ariadne's opaque eyes seemed to clear. She shook her head and took out a small sheet of paper, muttering to herself as she read through it, looking a bit lost. He walked over to her as soon as he deemed it safe and gently touched her arm. She glanced up and frowned, "The professor gave me a temporary leave for an internship. He gave me an address to stay in but his handwriting, it's." She handed the slip to him; he read it and felt his eyebrows rise into his hairline. _Miles knew that they would succeed._ "It's yours isn't it?" She scrutinized him, "You expression says it all." She plucked the paper from his hand and slipped it into her pocket and awkwardly faced him, "So… what does this mean," switching her weight from one foot to another as she struggled to find the correct words, "We were close, weren't we, in Limbo?" Dom nodded. "_Really _close, almost like…" After unsuccessfully searching for the correct words, she shrugged helplessly. Dom nodded, deliberately.

"How much can you recall?"

Ariadne bit her bottom lip, "Bits and pieces, some of your children… some of… her. Mostly you. I know you. I can feel it but I don't know what _happened. _We…"

"Are very close," Dom affirmed, wrapping an arm around her, she easily melted into his half hug. He kisses her forehead. "How about this? Miles is outside with a cab, I'll tell you as much as I can at my home. You can meet the kids, stay for a while, we'll talk and sort this out. What do you say?"

Ariadne looks up and grins, any signs of sleepiness were wiped clean from her face as she takes his offered hand and allows him to guide her out of the airport.


End file.
